2020 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 17

Problem

How many polynomials of the form $x^5 + ax^4 + bx^3 + cx^2 + dx + 2020$ , where $a$ , $b$ , $c$ , and $d$ are real numbers, have the property that whenever $r$ is a root, so is $\frac{-1+i\sqrt{3}}{2} \cdot r$ ? (Note that $i=\sqrt{-1}$ )

$\textbf{(A) } 0 \qquad \textbf{(B) }1 \qquad \textbf{(C) } 2 \qquad \textbf{(D) } 3 \qquad \textbf{(E) } 4$

Solution

Let $P(x) = x^5+ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+2020$ . We first notice that $\frac{-1+i\sqrt{3}}{2} = e^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ , so in order $r$ to be a root of $P$ , $re^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ must also be a root of P, meaning that 3 of the roots of $P$ must be $r$ , $re^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ , $re^{i\frac{4\pi}{3}}$ . However, since $P$ is degree 5, there must be two additional roots. Let one of these roots be $w$ , if $w$ is a root, then $we^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ and $we^{i\frac{4\pi}{3}}$ must also be roots. However, $P$ is a fifth degree polynomial, and can therefore only have $5$ roots. This implies that $w$ is either $r$ , $re^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ , or $re^{i\frac{4\pi}{3}}$ . Thus we know that the polynomial $P$ can be written in the form $(x-r)^m(x-re^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}})^n(x-re^{i\frac{4\pi}{3}})^p$ . Moreover, by Vieta's, we know that there is only one possible value for $r$ as $r^5 = 2020$ , meaning that the amount of possible polynomials $P$ is equivalent to the possible sets $(m,n,p)$ . In order for the coefficients of the polynomial to all be real, $n = p$ due to $re^{i\frac{2\pi}{3}}$ and $re^{i\frac{4\pi}{3}}$ being conjugates and since $m+n+p = 5$ , (as the polynomial is 5th degree) we have two possible solutions for $(m, n, p)$ which are $(1,2,2)$ and $(3,1,1)$ yielding two possible polynomials. The answer is thus $\boxed{\textbf{(C) } 2}$ .

-- Murtagh

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2020 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 17

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Solution