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Revision as of 12:01, 4 July 2013

Problem

What is the sum of all the solutions of $x = \left|2x-|60-2x|\right|$?

$\textbf{(A)}\ 32 \qquad \textbf{(B)}\ 60 \qquad \textbf{(C)}\ 92 \qquad \textbf{(D)}\ 120 \qquad \textbf{(E)}\ 124$

Solution

We evaluate this in cases:

Case 1 $x<30$

When $x<30$ we are going to have $60-2x>0$. When $x>0$ we are going to have $|x|>0\implies x>0$ and when $-x>0$ we are going to have $|x|>0\implies -x>0$. Therefore we have $x=|2x-(60-2x)|$. $x=|2x-60+2x|\implies x=|4x-60|$

Subcase 1 $30>x>15$

When $30>x>15$ we are going to have $4x-60>0$. When this happens, we can express $|4x-60|$ as $4x-60$. Therefore we get $x=4x-60\implies -3x=-60\implies x=20$. We check if $x=20$ is in the domain of the numbers that we put into this subcase, and it is, since $30>20>15$. Therefore $20$ is one possible solution.

Subcase 2 $x<15$

When $x<15$ we are going to have $4x-60<0$, therefore $|4x-60|$ can be expressed in the form $60-4x$. We have the equation $x=60-4x\implies 5x=60\implies x=12$. Since $12$ is less than $15$, $12$ is another possible solution. $x=|2x-|60-2x||$

Case 2 : $x>30$

When $x>30$, $60-2x<0$. When $x<0$ we can express this in the form $-x$. Therefore we have $-(60-2x)=2x-60$. This makes sure that this is positive, since we just took the negative of a negative to get a positive. Therefore we have $x=|2x-(2x-60)|$

$x=|2x-2x+60|$

$x=|60|$

$x=60$

We have now evaluated all the cases, and found the solution to be $\{60,12,20\}$ which have a sum of $\boxed{\textbf{(C)}\ 92}$

See Also

2010 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by
Problem 12 		Followed by
Problem 14
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25
All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions

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