2009 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 12

Revision as of 15:32, 14 August 2021 by MRENTHUSIASM (talk | contribs) (Undo revision 160259 by Raina0708 (talk) LaTeX makes the solution look neat and professional. I PM'ed Raina0708 and asked the user NOT to remove the LaTeX. I will undo this change.)

Problem

The two spinners shown are spun once and each lands on one of the numbered sectors. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers in the two sectors is prime?

[asy] unitsize(30);  draw(unitcircle); draw((0,0)--(0,-1)); draw((0,0)--(cos(pi/6),sin(pi/6))); draw((0,0)--(-cos(pi/6),sin(pi/6))); label("$1$",(0,.5)); label("$3$",((cos(pi/6))/2,(-sin(pi/6))/2)); label("$5$",(-(cos(pi/6))/2,(-sin(pi/6))/2));[/asy] [asy] unitsize(30);  draw(unitcircle); draw((0,0)--(0,-1)); draw((0,0)--(cos(pi/6),sin(pi/6))); draw((0,0)--(-cos(pi/6),sin(pi/6))); label("$2$",(0,.5)); label("$4$",((cos(pi/6))/2,(-sin(pi/6))/2)); label("$6$",(-(cos(pi/6))/2,(-sin(pi/6))/2));[/asy]

$\textbf{(A)}\ \frac{1}{2}\qquad\textbf{(B)}\ \frac{2}{3}\qquad\textbf{(C)}\ \frac{3}{4}\qquad\textbf{(D)}\ \frac{7}{9}\qquad\textbf{(E)}\ \frac{5}{6}$

Solution

The possible sums are \[\begin{tabular}{c|ccc} & 1 & 3 & 5 \\ \hline 2 & 3 & 5 & 7 \\ 4 & 5 & 7 & 9 \\ 6 & 7 & 9 & 11 \end{tabular}\]

Only $9$ is not prime, so there are $7$ prime numbers and $9$ total numbers for a probability of $\boxed{\textbf{(D)}\ \frac79}$.

See Also

2009 AMC 8 (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 11
Followed by
Problem 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
All AJHSME/AMC 8 Problems and Solutions

The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions. AMC logo.png