Problem

Let , and for , let . Calculate the product .

Solution

Since , . Setting and in this equation gives us

respectively , , and so
Notice that the value of was completely
unneeded!

Solution 2
Another way to do this is to realize that most of our numbers will be canceled out in the
multiplication in the end, and to just list out the terms of our product and cancel:

Problem
When a right triangle is rotated about one leg, the volume of the cone produced
is . When the triangle is rotated about the other leg, the volume of the cone
produced is . What is the length (in cm) of the hypotenuse of the triangle?

Solution
Let one leg of the triangle have length and let the other leg have length . When we rotate
around the leg of length , the result is a cone of height and radius , and so of

volume . Likewise, when we rotate around the leg of length we get a cone

of height and radius and so of volume . If we divide this equation by

the previous one, we get , so .

Then so and so . Then by

the Pythagorean Theorem, the hypotenuse has length .
Problem
Find if , , and are positive integers which satisfy ,
where .

Solution
Expanding out both sides of the given equation we
have . Two complex numbers are equal if and
only if their real parts and imaginary parts are equal,
so and . Since are integers, this
means is a divisor of 107, which is a prime number. Thus either or .
If , so , but is not divisible by 3, a
contradiction. Thus we must have , so and (since we
know is positive). Thus .

A small square is constructed inside a square of area 1 by dividing each side of the unit
square into equal parts, and then connecting thevertices to the division points closest to

the opposite vertices. Find the value of if the the area of the small square is exactly .

Solution 1
The lines passing through and divide the square into three parts, two right
triangles and a parallelogram. Using the smaller side of the parallelogram, , as the

base, where the height is 1, we find that the area of the parallelogram is . By
the Pythagorean Theorem, the longer base of the parallelogram

has length , so the parallelogram has

height . But the height of the parallelogram is the side of the
little square, so . Solving this quadratic equation gives .

Problem
A sequence of integers is chosen so that for
each . What is the sum of the first 2001 terms of this sequence if the sum of the first
1492 terms is 1985, and the sum of the first 1985 terms is 1492?

Solution
The problem gives us a sequence defined by a recursion, so let's calculate a few values to
get a feel for how it acts. We aren't given initial values, so let and .
Then , ,
, , and .
Since the sequence is recursively defined by the first 2 terms, after this point it must
continue to repeat. Thus, in particular for all , and so repeating
this times, for all integers and .
Because of this, the sum of the first 1492 terms can be greatly simplified: is
the largest multiple of 6 less than 1492,
so

, where we can make this last step because and so the entire second term of
our expression is zero.
Similarly, since
,

Finally, .
Then by the givens, and so and
so the answer is .

Problem
Assume that , , , and are positive integers such that , ,
and . Determine .

Solution
It follows from the givens that is a perfect fourth power, is a perfect fifth power, is
a perfect square and is a perfect cube. Thus, there exist integers and such that
, , and . So . We can factor the left-hand side of
this equation as a difference of two squares, . 19 is a prime
number and so we must have and .
Then and so , and .

Problem
The sum of the following seven numbers is exactly 19: , ,
, , , , . It is desired to replace each by
an integer approximation , , so that the sum of the 's is also 19 and so
that , the maximum of the "errors" , the maximum absolute value of the
difference, is as small as possible. For this minimum , what is ?

Solution
If any of the approximations is less than 2 or more than 3, the error associated with that
term will be larger than 1, so the largest error will be larger than 1. However, if all of
the are 2 or 3, the largest error will be less than 1. So in the best case, we write 19 as a
sum of 7 numbers, each of which is 2 or 3. Then there must be five 3s and two 2s. It is clear
that in the best appoximation, the two 2s will be used to approximate the two smallest of
the , so our approximations
are and and the largest error
is , so the answer is .

Problem
Let , , and be the vertices of a regular tetrahedron each of whose edges measures
1 meter. A bug, starting from vertex , observes the following rule: at each vertex it
chooses one of the three edges meeting at that vertex, each edge being equally likely to be

chosen, and crawls along that edge to the vertex at its opposite end. Let be
the probability that the bug is at vertex when it has crawled exactly 7 meters. Find the
value of .
Solution 1

Let denote the probability that the bug is at after it has crawled meters. Since the
bug can only be at vertex if it just left a vertex which is not , we

have . We also know , so we can quickly

compute , , , ,

, and , so the answer is . One can solve

this recursion fairly easily to determine a closed-form expression for .

Solution 4 (Cheap Solution)

Only do this if you don't know how to solve the problem and want to make a good guess.
Since there are 4 vertices of a tetrahedron, there is approximately a 1/4 probability of
coming back to A after 7 moves. Dividing 729 by 4 gives a number between 182 and 183. If
the ant continuously alternates his location from A to some other vertice, in the end, it will
not be at A. Therefore we chose the smaller number, 182.

Problem
Three 12 cm 12 cm squares are each cut into two pieces and , as shown in the first
figure below, by joining the midpoints of two adjacent sides. These six pieces are then
attached to a regular hexagon, as shown in the second figure, so as to fold into
a polyhedron. What is the volume (in ) of this polyhedron?

Solution
Note that gluing two of the given polyhedra together along a hexagonal face

(rotated from each other) yields a cube, so the volume is .