Natural number (where each represents an Arabic numeral): First write , then write , according to the rule. If a 2000-digit natural number written according to the above rule has the digits , where the digits 1, 9, 8, 7 all appear. Prove that the 2000-digit natural number written must be a composite number.
(China Beijing High School Grade 1 Mathematics Competition, 1987)
Problem 1099
Official solution
Among two-digit numbers, the multiples of 17 are
the multiples of 23 are
In the above 9 numbers, the units digits include . In the tens place, 6 appears twice, 7 does not appear, and the other digits each appear once.
Obviously, 7 cannot be in the tens place, meaning 7 cannot appear in the first 1999 digits of the two-thousand-digit number, so 7 must be the last digit of this two-thousand-digit number.
Thus, the digit before 7 should be 1 (since 17 is a multiple of 17), and before that, there should be a 5 (since 51 is a multiple of 17), and so on, forming the following diagram:
This means that when a certain digit appears, the next digit will be the one indicated by the arrow in the diagram.
Clearly, in the two-thousand-digit number ,
Starting from the 1996th position, the first 1996 digits, from , cycle through , with each cycle consisting of five numbers.
Therefore, the sum of all the digits in this two-thousand-digit number is
Thus, this two-thousand-digit number is a multiple of 3, and therefore a composite number.