LOGARITHMS

Q1) Let , and all exceed and let be a positive number such
that , and . Find .
SOL-Applying the change of base formula,

Therefore, .
Hence,
Q2) Determine the value
of if and .
SOL- We can simplify our expressions by changing everything to a
common base and by pulling exponents out of the logarithms. The given

equations then become and . Adding

the equations and factoring, we get .

Rearranging we see that . Again, we pull exponents out

of our logarithms to get .

This means that . The left-hand side can be interpreted as a

base-2 logarithm, giving us
Q3) Find if
SOL- We wish to convert this expression into one which has a uniform
base. Let's scale down all the powers of 8 to 2.
 Solving, we get , which is what we
want.

Q4) How many real numbers satisfy the equation ?

SOL-
The range of the sine function is . It is periodic (in this

problem) with a period of .

Thus, , and . The solutions for occur

in the domain of . When the logarithm function returns

a positive value; up to it will pass through the sine curve. There
are exactly 10 intersections of five periods (every two integral values
of ) of the sine curve and another curve that is , so there

are values (the subtraction of 6 since all the

“intersections” when must be disregarded). When , there is

exactly touching point between the two functions: .

When or , we can count more solutions. The solution
is .
Q5) Find the last three digits of the product of the positive
roots of
SOL- Let . Rewriting the equation in terms of , we have

Thus, the product

of the positive roots is , so

the last three digits are .

Q6) The system of equations

has two solutions and . Find

SOL-Subtracting the second equation from the first equation yields

If then . Substituting into the first equation

yields which is not possible.

If then . Substituting into the third equation gets

Thus either or . (Note

that here since logarithm isn't defined for negative number.)
Substituting and into the first equation will
obtain and , respectively. Thus
Q7) The number

can be written as where and are relatively prime positive

integers. Find .

SOL-

Therefore,
Q8) The solutions to the system of equations

are and . Find

SOL- Let and let .
From the first equation: .
Plugging this into the second equation

yields and thus, .

So,
.
And
.

Thus,
Q9) It is given that , where , ,
and are positive integers that form an increasing geometric
sequence and is the square of an integer. Find
SOL- . Since they form an increasing geometric sequence, is
the geometric mean of the product . .
Since is the square of an integer, we can find a few values of that
work: and . Out of these, the only value of that works

is , from which we can deduce that .

Thus,
Q10) Given that and

that find
SOL-Examining the first equation, we simplify as the following:

With this in mind, examining the second equation, we may simplify as

the following (utilizing logarithm properties):

From here, we may divide both sides by and then

proceed with the change-of-base logarithm property:

Thus, exponentiating both sides results in . Squaring

both sides gives us

Via the Pythagorean Identity, and is

simply , via substitution. Thus, substituting these results into the

current equation:
Using simple cross-multiplication techniques, we have , and
thus
Q11) Determine the number of ordered pairs of integers such
that and

SOL- Let . Then our equation becomes . Multiplying

through by and solving the quadratic gives us or .
Hence or .
For the first case , can range from 2 to 44, a total of 43 values.
For the second case , can range from 2 to 12, a total of 11
values.

Thus the total number of possible values is .

Q12) The sequence is geometric with and common
ratio where and are positive integers. Given
that find the number of possible
ordered pairs
SOL- Using the method from Solution 1, we
get .
Since and both have to be powers of , we can rewrite this
as .
. So, when we subtract from , the result is
divisible by . Evaluating that, we get as a valid solution.
Since , when we add to the value of , we can
subtract from the value of to keep the equation valid. Using this, we
get . In order to count the number of
ordered pairs, we can simply count the number of values. Every odd
number from to is included, so we have solutions.
Q13) The lengths of the sides of a triangle with positive area are
, , and , where is a positive integer. Find the number of
possible values for .
SOL-- By the Triangle Inequality and applying the well-known logarithmic
property , we have that
Also,

Combining these two inequalities:

Thus is in the set ; the number of positive integer which

satisfies this requirement is .

Q14) Let
Find the remainder when is divided by 1000. ( is the greatest
integer less than or equal to , and is the least integer greater than
or equal to .)
SOL- The ceiling of a number minus the floor of a number is either equal
to zero (if the number is an integer); otherwise, it is equal to 1. Thus, we
need to find when or not is an integer.

The change of base formula shows that . For

the term to cancel out, is a power of . Thus, is equal to the
sum of all the numbers from 1 to 1000, excluding all powers of 2
from to .
The formula for the sum of an arithmetic sequence and the sum of
a geometric sequence yields that our answer

is .
Simplifying, we
get

The answer is
Q15) Evaluate:
SOL- By the Change of Base Formula, we have

, or ; this equals .
Q16) Suppose that , , and are positive real numbers such
that , , and . Find

SOL- First, we have:

Now, let , then we have:

This is all we need to evaluate the given formula. Note that in our case
we have , , and . We can now compute:

Similarly, we get
and
and therefore the answer is .

Q17) For each positive integer let . Find the

largest value of for which .
Note: is the greatest integer less than or equal to .
SOL- Because we want the value for which , the average
value of the 100 terms of the sequence should be around . For the
value of to be , . We want kn to be around
the middle of that range, and for k to be in the middle of 0 and 100,

let , so , and
. , so we want to lower . Testing yields , so our
answer is still .
Q18) Positive numbers , ,
and satisfy and .
Find
SOL- Using the properties of logarithms, by taking the log
base 10 of both sides,
and by using
the fact that .
Through further simplification, we find that .
It can be seen that there is enough information to use the
formula , as we have
both and , and we want to find .
After plugging in the values into the equation, we find
that is equal to .

However, we want to find , so we take

the square root of , or .

Q19) Suppose is in the interval and .

Find
SOL- we can rewrite the given expression as Divide both
sides by . Square both sides.
Substitute the identity .
Let . Then . Since , we can easily see
that is a solution. Thus, the answer
is
Q20) Let and be positive real numbers that satisfy
The value of can be

expressed in the form where and are relatively prime positive

integers. Find
SOL- Since there are only two dependent equations given and three
unknowns, the three expressions given can equate to any common
value (that isn't 0, of course), so to simplify the problem let us assume
without loss of generality that

Then Solving these equations, we quickly

see that and
then Finally, our desired value
is and thus