2016 AIME I Problems/Problem 12
Contents
[hide]Problem
Find the least positive integer such that is a product of at least four not necessarily distinct primes.
Solution 1
is the product of two consecutive integers, so it is always even. Thus is odd and never divisible by . Thus any prime that divides must divide . We see that . We can verify that is not a perfect square mod for each of . Therefore, all prime factors of are .
Let for primes . From here, we could go a few different ways:
Solution 1a
Suppose ; then . Reducing modulo 11, we get so .
Suppose . Then we must have , which leads to , i.e., .
leads to (impossible)! Then leads to , a prime (impossible). Finally, for we get .
Thus our answer is .
Solution 1b
Let for primes . If , then . We can multiply this by and complete the square to find . But hence we have pinned a perfect square strictly between two consecutive perfect squares, a contradiction. Hence . Thus , or . From the inequality, we see that . , so and we are done.
Solution 3
First, we can show that . This can be done by just testing all residue classes.
For example, we can test or to show that is not divisible by 2.
Case 1: m = 2k
Case 2: m = 2k+1
Now, we can test , which fails, so we test , and we get m = .
-AlexLikeMath
Video Solution
~MathProblemSolvingSkills.com
See Also
2016 AIME I (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 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |
The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions.