1985 AIME Problems

Problem #1
Let

, and for

, let

. Calculate the product

Solution
Since
respectively

. Setting
,

and
and

in this equation gives us

so

Notice that the value of

was completely unneeded!

Problem #2
When a right triangle is rotated about one leg, the volume of the cone produced is
the triangle is rotated about the other leg, the volume of the cone produced is
length (in cm) of the hypotenuse of the triangle?

. When
. What is the

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
when we rotate around the leg of length we get a cone of height and radius
volume

. Likewise,
and so of

. If we divide this equation by the previous one, we

get

, so

Then

so

the hypotenuse has length

.
and

so

. Then by the Pythagorean Theorem,

Problem #3
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
adivisor 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

Problem #4
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 the vertices 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
so

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

Solution 2

Surrounding the square with area

Thus,
solve this problem.

, where

are

right triangles with hypotenuse

(sides of the large square).

is the area of the of the 4 triangles. We can thus use proportions to

Also,

Thus,
guess and check gives us

Simple factorization and

Problem #5
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:
multiple of 6 less than 1492,
so

, where we can make this last step because

our expression is zero.

is the largest

and so the entire second term of

Similarly, since

Finally,
Then by the givens,
is
.

.
and

so

and so the answer

Problem #6
As shown in the figure, triangle
is divided into six smaller triangles by lines drawn from
the vertices through a common interior point. The areasof four of these triangles are as indicated. Find the
area of triangle
.

Solution
Let the interior point be , let the points on
,
and
be , and , respectively. Let be the
area of
and be the area of
. Note that
and
share the
same altitude from , so the ratio of their areas is the same as the ratio of their bases.
Similarly,
and
share the same altitude from , so the ratio of their areas is the same as
the ratio of their bases. Moreover, the two pairs of bases are actually the same, and thus in the same
ratio. As a result, we have:
so
.

or equivalently

and

Applying identical reasoning to the triangles with bases

and
, we get
that
and
. Substituting from this equation into the previous one
gives
, from which we get
and so the area
of
is
.

so

Problem #7
As shown in the figure, triangle
is divided into six smaller triangles by lines drawn from
the vertices through a common interior point. The areasof four of these triangles are as indicated. Find the
area of triangle
.

Solution
Let the interior point be , let the points on
,
and
be , and , respectively. Let be the
area of
and be the area of
. Note that
and
share the
same altitude from , so the ratio of their areas is the same as the ratio of their bases.
Similarly,
and
share the same altitude from , so the ratio of their areas is the same as
the ratio of their bases. Moreover, the two pairs of bases are actually the same, and thus in the same
ratio. As a result, we have:
so
.

or equivalently

and

Applying identical reasoning to the triangles with bases

and
, we get
that
and
. Substituting from this equation into the previous one
gives
, from which we get
and so the area
of
is
.

so

Problem #8
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 #9
In a circle, parallel chords of lengths 2, 3, and 4 determine central angles of , , and
radians,
respectively, where
. If
, which is a positive rational number, is expressed as a fraction in
lowest terms, what is the sum of its numerator and denominator?

Solution

All chords of a given length in a given circle subtend the same arc and therefore the same central angle.
Thus, by the given, we can re-arrange our chords into a triangle with the circle as its circumcircle.

This triangle has semiperimeter

has area

so by Heron's formula it
. The area of a given triangle with sides of length

circumradius of length

is also given by the formula

, so

and

and
.

Now, consider the triangle formed by two radii and the chord of length 2. This isosceles triangle has vertex
angle , so by the Law of Cosines,
and the answer is

Problem #10
How many of the first 1000 positive integers can be expressed in the form
,
where

is a real number, and

denotes the greatest integer less than or equal to ?

Solution
We will be able to reach the same number of integers while
when ranges from to
for any integer (Quick
proof:

ranges from 0 to 1 as we will

).

Since
exactly 50 times the number of integers we will be able to reach as
excluding 0.

, the answer must be

ranges from 0 to 1, including 1 but

Solution 1
Noting that all of the numbers are even, we can reduce this to any real number

between

to

, as this

will be equivalent to to
for any integer (same reasoning as above). So now we only need to
test every 10 numbers; and our answer will be 100 times the number of integers we can reach between 1
and 10.
We can now approach this by directly searching for the integers (this solution) or brute forcing all of the
cases (next solution):
We can match up the greatest integer functions with one of the partitions of the integer. If we
let

then we get the solution

; now consider when

,
. But according to this the maximum we can get is
first 6 numbers.

: Easily possible, for example try plugging in

: Also simple, for example using

,
, so we only need to try the

: The partition must either be

or
. If
, then
, but then
possible; and vice versa to show that the latter partition doesn't work. So we cannot obtain .

: We can partition as

, and from the previous case we see that

: We can partition as

, from which we find that

works.

: We can partition as

, from which we find that

works.

; not

works.

Out of these 6 cases, only 3 fails. So between 1 and 10 we can reach only the integers
hence our solution is
.

Solution 2
As we change the value of , the value of our expression changes only when
number of the form
numbers of the form
results here:

, where

crosses rational

is divisible by 2, 4, 6 or 8. Thus, we need only see what happens at the

. This gives us 24 calculations to make; we summarize the

Thus, we hit 12 of the first 20 integers and so we hit

of the first

Solution 3

Recall from Hermite's Identity that

. Then we can

rewrite
. There
are
terms here (we don't actually have to write all of it out; we can just see where there will be
duplicates and subtract accordingly from ). Starting from every integer , we can keep adding to
achieve one higher value for each of these terms, but after raising the last term, we will have raised the
whole sum by
while only achieving
of those
values. We can conveniently shift the
(since it
can be achieved) to the position of the so that there are only complete cycles of , and the answer
is

Solution 4
Imagine that we increase from to . At the beginning, the value of our expression is , at the end it
is
. How many integers between and
did we skip? We skip some integers
precisely at those points where at least two of
,
,
, and
become integers at the same time.
Obviously, for
and
all four values become integers at the same time, hence we skip three
integers at each of these locations. Additionally, for
and
the values
and
become
integers at the same time, hence we skip one integer at each of the locations.
Therefore for
we skip a total of
we hit
of the integers from to , and so we hit

integers. As in Solution 2, we conclude that

of the first
.

Problem #11
An ellipse has foci at
of its major axis?

and

in the

-plane and is tangent to the -axis. What is the length

Solution
An ellipse is defined to be the locus of points such that the sum of the distances between and the
two foci is constant. Let
,
and
be the point of tangency of the
ellipse with the -axis. Then
must be the point on the axis such that the sum
is minimal.
Finding the optimal location for
is a classic problem: for any path from
to
and then back to , we
can reflect the second leg of this path (from
to ) across the -axis. Then our path connects
to the
reflection
of
via some point on the -axis, and this path will have shortest length exactly when our
original path has shortest length. This occurs exactly when we have a straight-line path.

The sum of the two distances

by the distance formula is
just

and

is therefore equal to the length of the segment

, which

Finally, let
symmetry

and

the answer is

be the two endpoints of the major axis of the ellipse. Then by

so
(because is on the ellipse), so
.

Problem #12
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
exactly 7 meters. Find the value of .

be the probability that the bug is at vertex

when it has crawled

Solution
Solution 1
Let

denote the probability that the bug is at

be at vertex
know

if it just left a vertex which is not

after it has crawled

meters. Since the bug can only

, we have

, so we can quickly compute

. We also

,
,
and
, so the answer is
easily to determine a closed-form expression for
.

,
. One can solve this recursion fairly

Problem #13
The numbers in the sequence
,
,
,
,
are of the form
where
For each , let
be the greatest common divisor of
maximum value of
as ranges through the positive integers.

,
and

. Find the

Solution 1
If

denotes the greatest common divisor of

have
must divide

. Now assuming that

divides
if it is going to divide the entire expression
.

Thus the equation turns into

we can multiply the left integer,
divisor. Since the

and , then we
, it

. Now note that since

is odd for integral ,
, by a multiple of two without affecting the greatest common

term is quite restrictive, let's multiply by

so that we can get a

So
simplified the way we wanted it to! Now using similar techniques we can
write
single . This means the largest possible value for
when
.

is

in there.
. It

. Thus
must divide
for every
, and we see that it can be achieved

Solution 2
We know that
find the GCD of

and
, we can use the Euclidean algorithm:

and

Now, the question is to find the GCD of

from
. This leaves us with
us

. Since we want to

and
. We subtract
100 times
. We want this to equal 0, so solving for gives

. The last remainder is 0, thus

is our GCD.

Problem #14
In a tournament each player played exactly oneGAME against each of the other players. In each game
the winner was awarded 1 point, the loser got 0 points, and each of the two players earned 1/2 point if the
game was a tie. After the completion of the tournament, it was found that exactly half of the points earned
by each player were earned against the ten players with the least number of points. (In particular, each of
the ten lowest scoring players earned half of her/his points against the other nine of the ten). What was
the total number of players in the tournament?

Solution
Let us suppose for convenience that there were

players over all. Among the

weakest 10 there were

points earned. By the givens, this means that

these

games played and thus

players also earned

players not in the

points against our weakest 10. Now, the 10 weakest players playing

amongst themselves played

games and so earned 45 points playing each other. Then they
also earned 45 points playing against the stronger players. Since every point earned falls into one of

these categories, It follows that the total number of points earned was
However, there was one point earned per game, and there were a total

of

games played and thus

points earned. So we

have

so
and
and
or
. Now, note that the top players got
points in total
(by our previous calculation) for an average of
, while the bottom 10 got 90 points total, for an
average of 9. Thus we must have

, so

and the answer is

Problem #15
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
yields a cube, so the volume is
Image:

from each other)