2020 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 23

Problem 23

How many integers $n \geq 2$ are there such that whenever $z_1, z_2, ..., z_n$ are complex numbers such that

$|z_1| = |z_2| = ... = |z_n| = 1 \text{ and } z_1 + z_2 + ... + z_n = 0,$ then the numbers $z_1, z_2, ..., z_n$ are equally spaced on the unit circle in the complex plane?

$\textbf{(A)}\ 1 \qquad\textbf{(B)}\ 2 \qquad\textbf{(C)}\ 3 \qquad\textbf{(D)}\ 4 \qquad\textbf{(E)}\ 5$

Solution

For $n=2$ , we see that if $z_{1}+z_{2}=0$ , then $z_{1}=-z_{2}$ , so they are evenly spaced along the unit circle.

For $n=3$ , WLOG, we can set $z_{1}=1$ . Notice that now $\mathscr{Re}(z_{1}+z{2})=-1$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg) and $\mathscr{Im}\{z_{1}\}=-\mathscr{IM}\{z_{2}\}$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg)

2020 AMC 12B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 22	Followed by Problem 24
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2020 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 23

Problem 23

Solution

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