2021 AIME I Problems/Problem 7

Problem

Find the number of pairs $(m,n)$ of positive integers with $1\le m<n\le 30$ such that there exists a real number $x$ satisfying $\sin(mx)+\sin(nx)=2.$

Solution

The maximum value of $\sin \theta$ is $1$ , which is achieved at $\theta = \frac{\pi}{2}+2k\pi$ for some integer $k$ . This is left as an exercise to the reader.

This implies that $\sin(mx) = \sin(nx) = 1$ , and that $mx = \frac{\pi}{2}+2a\pi$ and $nx = \frac{\pi}{2}+2b\pi$ , for integers $a, b$ .

Taking their ratio, we have $\frac{mx}{nx} = \frac{\frac{\pi}{2}+2a\pi}{\frac{\pi}{2}+2b\pi} \implies \frac{m}{n} = \frac{4a + 1}{4b + 1} \implies \frac{m}{4a + 1} = \frac{n}{4b + 1} = k.$ It remains to find all $m, n$ that satisfy this equation.

If $k = 1$ , then $m \equiv n \equiv 1 \pmod 4$ . This corresponds to choosing two elements from the set $\{1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29\}$ . There are $\binom 82$ ways to do so.

If $k < 1$ , by multiplying $m$ and $n$ by the same constant $c = \frac{1}{k}$ , we have that $mc \equiv nc \equiv 1 \pmod 4$ . This means $m \equiv n \equiv 3 \pmod 4$ . This corresponds to choosing two numbers from the set $\{3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27\}$ . There are $\binom 72$ ways here.

Finally, if $k > 1$ , note that $k$ must be an integer. This means that $m, n$ belong to the set $\{k, 5k, 9k, \dots\}$ , or $\{3k, 7k, 11k, \dots\}$ (why?). Taking casework on $k$ , we get the sets $\{2, 10, 18, 26\}, \{6, 14, 22, 30\}, \{4, 20\}, \{12, 28\}$ . Some sets have been omitted; this is because they were counted in the other cases already. This sums to $\binom 42 + \binom 42 + \binom 22 + \binom 22$ .

In total, there are $\binom 82 + \binom 72 + \binom 42 + \binom 42 + \binom 22 + \binom 22 = \boxed{63}$ pairs of $(m, n)$ .

This solution was brought to you by Leonard_my_dude.

2021 AIME I (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 6	Followed by Problem 8
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2021 AIME I Problems/Problem 7

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