2008 AIME II Problems/Problem 9
Problem
A particle is located on the coordinate plane at . Define a move for the particle as a counterclockwise rotation of
radians about the origin followed by a translation of
units in the positive
-direction. Given that the particle's position after
moves is
, find the greatest integer less than or equal to
.
Contents
[hide]Solution
Solution 1
Let P(x, y) be the position of the particle on the xy-plane, r be the length OP where O is the origin, and "a" be the inclination of OP to the x-axis. If (x', y') is the position of the particle after a move from P, then and
.
Let
be the position of the particle after the nth move, where
and
. Then
,
. This implies
,
.
Substituting
and
, we have
and
again for the first time.
and
. Hence the final answer is

Solution 2
Let the particle's position be represented by a complex number. The transformation takes to
where
and
. We let
and
so that we want to find
.
Basically, the thing comes out to

Notice that

Furthermore, . Thus, the final answer is

See also
2008 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 8 |
Followed by Problem 10 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |