Sunday, September 28, 2008

Problem Of The Week 33

The sum of base-10 logarithms of divisors of 10^n is 792. what is n?

(A) 11  (B) 12  (C) 10  (D) 13 (E) 14

4 comments:

  1. Divisors of 10^n- Product of all elements of sets {2^0,2^1...2^n} {5^0,5^1..5^n}. Sum of base 10 logs of these elements = log 2^{[n(n+1)/2]*n+1} * 5^{[n(n+1)/2]*n+1} =log 10^{[n(n+1)/2]*n+1} ={[n(n+1)/2]*n+1} = 792. Substituting options, we get n=11. Not very sure. There must be some better way.

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  2. absolutely correct !

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  3. I'm not satisfied with the solution.Took some time.Is there any better method?

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  4. its easy

    keep the exponent of 5 constant
    and add all of exponents of 2
    we get 0+1+2+...n=n(n+1)/2

    now exponent of 5 can take any value from 0.n=n+1 values

    so total of
    n(n+1)^2/2=792
    n=11

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