Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 1 of 260 #1 of 2000

Problem 1

AMC 10/12, early questions
Number theory Difficulty 3.0 Find the answer

Which of the following could not be the units digit [ones digit] of the square of a whole number?
(A) 1(B) 4(C) 5(D) 6(E) 8\text{(A)}\ 1 \qquad \text{(B)}\ 4 \qquad \text{(C)}\ 5 \qquad \text{(D)}\ 6 \qquad \text{(E)}\ 8

Official solution

We see that 12=11^2=1, 22=42^2=4, 52=255^2=25, and 42=164^2=16, so already we know that either E\text{E} is the answer or the problem has some issues.
For integers, only the units digit affects the units digit of the final result, so we only need to test the squares of the integers from 00 through 99 inclusive. Testing shows that 88 is unachievable, so the answer is E\boxed{\text{E}}.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.