Digit goes to Recycle bin

Find sum of all value(s) of n n such that if the first digit in decimal representation of 2 n 2^n is removed , the remaining digits can be represented as some power of two.


The answer is 11.

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1 solution

Patrick Corn
Aug 19, 2015

We get 2 n d 1 0 k = 2 m 2^n - d \cdot 10^k = 2^m where d d is the first decimal digit of 2 n 2^n , and k + 1 k+1 is the number of digits of 2 n 2^n . Rearranging, we get 2 m ( 2 n m 1 ) = d 1 0 k 2^m(2^{n-m}-1) = d \cdot 10^k So we can divide through by the 2 m 2^m on both sides to get 2 n m 1 = d 5 k 2^{n-m}-1 = d' \cdot 5^k where d d' is odd (since the left side is odd, dividing through by 2 m 2^m must strip out all the factors of 2 2 on the right side).

Now the key observation is that 2 m 2^m has only one fewer digit than 2 n 2^n , so 2 n m 100 2^{n-m} \le 100 , so 1 n m 6 1 \le n-m \le 6 . Stepping through the cases gives n m = 4 , k = 1 , d = 3 n-m=4, k = 1, d' = 3 as the only solution, so 2 n 2^n has two digits, and so the only solutions are 2 n = 32 , 64 2^n = 32,64 . The answer is 5 + 6 = 11 5+6 = \fbox{11} .

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