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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Find the answer

Compute tan(π7)tan(2π7)tan(3π7)\tan \left(\frac{\pi}{7}\right) \tan \left(\frac{2 \pi}{7}\right) \tan \left(\frac{3 \pi}{7}\right).

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Consider the polynomial P(z)=z71P(z)=z^{7}-1. Let z=eix=cosx+isinxz=e^{i x}=\cos x+i \sin x. Then z71=(cos7x(72)cos5xsin2x+(74)cos3xsin4x(76)cosxsin6x1)+i(sin7x+(72)sin5xcos2x(74)sin3xcos4x+(76)sinxcos6x) \begin{aligned} z^{7}-1= & \left(\cos ^{7} x-\binom{7}{2} \cos ^{5} x \sin ^{2} x+\binom{7}{4} \cos ^{3} x \sin ^{4} x-\binom{7}{6} \cos x \sin ^{6} x-1\right) \\ & +i\left(-\sin ^{7} x+\binom{7}{2} \sin ^{5} x \cos ^{2} x-\binom{7}{4} \sin ^{3} x \cos ^{4} x+\binom{7}{6} \sin x \cos 6 x\right) \end{aligned} Consider the real part of this equation. We may simplify it to 64cos7x164 \cos ^{7} x-\ldots-1, where the middle terms are irrelevant. The roots of PP are x=2π7,4π7,x=\frac{2 \pi}{7}, \frac{4 \pi}{7}, \ldots, so k=17cos(2πk7)=164\prod_{k=1}^{7} \cos \left(\frac{2 \pi k}{7}\right)=\frac{1}{64}. But k=17cos(2πk7)=(k=13cos(kπ7))2 \prod_{k=1}^{7} \cos \left(\frac{2 \pi k}{7}\right)=\left(\prod_{k=1}^{3} \cos \left(\frac{k \pi}{7}\right)\right)^{2} so k=13cos(kπ7)=18\prod_{k=1}^{3} \cos \left(\frac{k \pi}{7}\right)=\frac{1}{8}. Now consider the imaginary part of this equation. We may simplify it to 64sin11x++7sinx-64 \sin ^{11} x+\ldots+7 \sin x, where again the middle terms are irrelevant. We can factor out sinx\sin x to get 64sin10x++7-64 \sin ^{10} x+\ldots+7, and this polynomial has roots x=2π7,,12π7x=\frac{2 \pi}{7}, \ldots, \frac{12 \pi}{7} (but not 0 ). Hence k=16sin(2πk7)=764\prod_{k=1}^{6} \sin \left(\frac{2 \pi k}{7}\right)=-\frac{7}{64}. But, like before, we have k=16sin(2πk7)=(k=13sin(2πk7))2 \prod_{k=1}^{6} \sin \left(\frac{2 \pi k}{7}\right)=-\left(\prod_{k=1}^{3} \sin \left(\frac{2 \pi k}{7}\right)\right)^{2} hence k=13sin(kπ7)=78\prod_{k=1}^{3} \sin \left(\frac{k \pi}{7}\right)=\frac{\sqrt{7}}{8}. As a result, our final answer is 7818=7\frac{\frac{\sqrt{7}}{8}}{\frac{1}{8}}=\sqrt{7}.

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Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.