Does perfect square imply perfect square polynomial?

Algebra Level 2

True or false:

Consider a quadratic expression f ( x ) = x 2 + b x + c f(x) = x^2 + bx + c , where b b and c c are rational numbers. If for all rational numbers r r , f ( r ) f(r) is the square of a rational number, then f ( x ) f(x) must be the square of a linear polynomial.

True False

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1 solution

Calvin Lin Staff
Aug 29, 2015

By completing the square, we simply need to consider polynomials of the form x 2 + n m x^2 + \frac{n}{m} , where m , n m,n are coprime integers.

With x = 0 x = 0 , we get that n m \frac{n}{m} is a square of a rational number, and hence n m nm is a perfect square.
With x = 1 m x = \frac{1}{m} , we get that n m + 1 m 2 \frac{nm + 1 } {m^2} is a square of a rational number, and hence n m + 1 nm +1 is a perfect square.

Since the only 2 perfect squares that differ by one are 0 and 1, hence we conclude that n m = 0 nm = 0 . Since m 0 m \neq 0 , thus n = 0 n = 0 , and hence we conclude that f ( x ) = x 2 f(x) = x^2 which is a square of a polynomial.

Nice Solution there calvin! :) Keep those problems coming .. :)

Jun Arro Estrella - 5 years, 9 months ago

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