Find them all

Geometry Level 3

How many solutions are there for the equation below?

sin ( π x ) = x 100 \large \sin(\pi x) = \frac{x}{100}


The answer is 199.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Chew-Seong Cheong
Oct 14, 2017

From the LHS, we have 1 sin ( π x ) 1 -1 \le \sin(\pi x) \le 1 . Therefore, 1 x 100 1 -1 \le \dfrac x{100} \le 1 , 100 x 100 \implies -100 \le x \le 100 . Since both the LHS and RHS are odd functions. The number of solutions in 0 x 100 0 \le x \le 100 and 100 x 0 -100 \le x \le 0 are the same and they share one solution at x = 0 x=0 (see figure below). We only need to consider 0 x 100 0 \le x \le 100 .

From the figure, we note for every x = ( 2 n 1 ) π x = (2n-1)\pi , where n N n \in \mathbb N , there are 2 solutions. From { 1 , 3 , 5...99 } \{1, 3, 5 ... 99\} , there are 50 odd numbers and therefore 100 100 solutions. And from 100 x 100 -100 \le x \le 100 , there are 100 × 2 1 = 199 100 \times 2 - 1 = \boxed{199} solutions.

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...