2007 AIME II Problems/Problem 12
Problem
The increasing geometric sequence consists entirely of integral powers of
Given that
and
find
Solution
Suppose that , and that the common ratio between the terms is
.
The first conditions tells us that . Using the rules of logarithms, we can simplify that to
. Thus,
. Since all of the terms of the geometric sequence are integral powers of
, we know that both
and
must be powers of 3. Denote
and
. We find that
. The possible positive integral pairs of
are
.
The second condition tells us that . Using the sum formula for a geometric series and substituting
and
, this simplifies to
. The fractional part
. Thus, we need
. Checking the pairs above, only
is close.
Our solution is therefore .
Solution 2
All these integral powers of are all different, thus in base
the sum of these powers would consist of
s and
s. Thus the largest value
must be
in order to preserve the givens. Then we find by the given that
, and we know that the exponents of
are in an arithmetic sequence. Thus
, and
. Thus
.
Solution 3
Like above, we use logarithmic identities to convert the problem into workable equations. We begin by labelling the powers of 3. Call ,
,
..., as
,
, and
... respectively. With this format we can rewrite the first given equation as
. Simplify to get
. (1)
Now, rewrite the second given equation as . Obviously,
, aka
because there are some small fractional change that is left over. This means
is
. Thinking about the geometric sequence, it's clear each consecutive value of
will be either a power of three times smaller or larger. In other words, the earliest values of
will be negligible compared to the last values of
. Even in the best case scenario, where the common ratio is 3), the values left of
are not enough to sum to a value greater than 2 times
(amount needed to raise the power of 3 by 1. This confirms that
. (2)
Use equations 1 and 2 to get and
.
-jackshi2006
See also
2007 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 11 |
Followed by Problem 13 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
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