Maths Olympiad Prep

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Problem 795

AMC 12 late, AIME early
Number theory Difficulty 4.4 Find the answer HMMT November

Find the smallest nn such that n!n! ends with 10 zeroes.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

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Official solution

The number of zeroes that n!n! ends with is the largest power of 10 dividing n!n!. The exponent of 5 dividing n!n! exceeds the exponent of 2 dividing n!n!, so we simply seek the exponent of 5 dividing n!n!. For a number less than 125, this exponent is just the number of multiples of 5, but not 25, less than nn plus twice the number of multiples of 25 less than nn. Counting up, we see that 24! ends with 4 zeroes while 25! ends with 6 zeroes, so n!n! cannot end with 5 zeroes. Continuing to count up, we see that the smallest nn such that n!n! ends with 10 zeroes is 45.

Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.