1990 AIME Problems/Problem 1

Revision as of 23:57, 7 September 2011 by Danielguo94 (talk | contribs) (Solution)

Problem

The increasing sequence $2,3,5,6,7,10,11,\ldots$ consists of all positive integers that are neither the square nor the cube of a positive integer. Find the 500th term of this sequence.

Solution

Because there aren't that many perfect squares or cubes, let's look for the smallest perfect square greater than $500$. This happens to be $23^2=529$. Notice that there are $23$ squares and $8$ cubes less than or equal to $529$, but $1$ and $2^6$ are both squares and cubes. Thus, there are $529-23-8+2=500$ numbers in our sequence less than $529$. Magically, we want the $500th$ term, so our answer is the smallest non-square and non-cube less than $529$, which is $\boxed{528}$. $$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg)$

See also

1990 AIME (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
First Question
Followed by
Problem 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
All AIME Problems and Solutions