This blog has moved to www.mscroggs.co.uk.

Monday 23 June 2014

Sunday Afternoon Maths XVIII Answers & Extensions

This post contains the answers to this week's Sunday Afternoon Maths and some extension problems based around the originals.

Parabola

The co-ordinates of the points where the lines intersect the parabola are \((a,a^2)\) and \((-b,b^2)\). Hence the gradient of the line between them is:
$$\frac{a^2-b^2}{a-(-b)}=\frac{(a+b)(a-b)}{a+b}=a-b$$
Therefore the y-coordinate is:
$$b^2 + b(a-b) = ba$$
Ferdinand Möbius, who discovered this property called the curve a Multiplicationsmaschine or 'multipliction machine' as it could be used to perform multiplication.
Extension
How could you use the graph of \(y=x^2\) to divide 100 by 7?

Seven Digits

Let's call Dr. Dingo's number \(n\). If the number is squared twice then multiplied by \(n\), we get \(n^5\).
For all integers \(n\), the final digit of \(n^5\) is the same as the final digit of \(n\). In other words:
$$n^5\equiv n \mod 10$$
Therefore, the final digit of Dr. Dingo's number is 7.
$$7^5=16807$$ $$17^5=1419857$$ $$27^5=14348907$$
So, in order for the answer to have seven digits, Dr. Dingo's number was 17.
Extension
For which integers \(m\) does there exist an integer \(n\) such that for all integers \(x\):
$$x^n\equiv x \mod m$$

No comments:

Post a Comment