For how many positive integers do the lines with equations and intersect at a point whose coordinates are positive integers?
Solution
Suppose that is a fixed, but unknown, positive integer. Suppose also that the lines with equations and intersect at the point with positive integer coordinates . Since and , adding these equations, we get and so . Since and are to be positive integers and , then and are a positive divisor pair of 624 with . Now , and so the positive divisors of 624 are . We also want the value of to be a positive integer. Since the point lies on the line with equation , then which gives , which is an integer exactly when is a multiple of 4. Therefore, we want to be a positive divisor of 624 which is a multiple of 4. Thus, the possible values of are . The corresponding values of are . Since , we eliminate from this list. Thus, the possible values of are . The corresponding values of are . These correspond to the following values of . Using , these give the following values of . These are indeed all positive. This means that there are 7 values of with the required properties.