Suraj is interested in how the dimensions of a rectangle affect its area. He sets up a ratio of the area of a square to the area of a rectangle of equal perimeter ( ).The sides of the rectangle are modeled by and , while the side length of the square is . Suraj's friend tells him that the product of all of his ratios in which is a prime number greater than two and can be determined. He stated that the product would be equal to the area of a particular circle multiplied by . If the radius of the circle is , then what is the value of ?
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The first step in solving this multi-part problem is to generalize Suraj's ratio. The square's area is s 2 , and the rectangle's area is s 2 − a 2 . The ratio, then, is s 2 − a 2 s 2 . The friend mentions the product of this ratio with different values, so we replace a with 1 and s with P n (the n th prime). Now we set up the product as
∏ n = 2 ∞ P n 2 − 1 P n 2
Notice that n = 2 because we start with the second prime number in the problem. This product is well known as a Euler Product , which (when n is initialized as 1 ) is equivalent to
∑ n = 1 ∞ n 2 1 = 6 π 2
(This equivalence can be found without prior knowledge of the Euler Product, but it would be more difficult)
However, since n is initialized as the second prime, we must take 6 π 2 and divide it by the term not included in our product (where n = 1 ), 3 4 . Our product, then, is 8 π 2 . Divide by π , and it is clear to see that the radius of our "circle" is 8 1 . Multiplying this by 1 0 0 0 then rounding up, we get 3 5 4 , our solution.