How Many Divisors?

Suppose 3 n has 56 positive divisors, 6 n has 70 positive divisors, and 9 n has M positive divisors. How many different possible values of M are there (that can be achieved by some positive integer n )?


The answer is 3.

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1 solution

Josh Rowley
Jan 27, 2014

Let us write n = 2 a × 3 b × k n = 2^{a} \times 3^{b} \times k where k N k \in \mathbb{N} and the number of factors of k k is c c . From the statements given in the question we may obtain 2 equations: 56 = ( a + 1 ) ( b + 2 ) c 56=(a+1)(b+2)c 70 = ( a + 2 ) ( b + 2 ) c 70=(a+2)(b+2)c ( a + 1 ) ( b + 2 ) c 0 (a+1)(b+2)c \ne 0 therefore we can divide the second equation by the first to obtain 70 56 = a + 2 a + 1 \dfrac{70}{56} = \dfrac{a+2}{a+1} yielding a = 3 a = 3 . So, plugging this into the first equation we get ( b + 2 ) c = 14 (b+2)c = 14 . b 0 b \ge 0 and therefore b + 2 2 b+2 \ge 2 . Since ( b + 2 ) (b+2) must be a factor of 14 and is at least 2, we get that ( b + 2 ) [ 2 , 7 , 14 ] (b+2) \in [2,7,14] , each of which yields a solution. Therefore there are 3 \fbox{3} solutions

I'm a little confused by the use of b+2 here. Why not 56 = (a+1)(b+1)(c+1) and 70 = (a+2)(b+1)(c+1)? That would yield (b+1)(c+1) = 14, so b is 1 , 6, or 13. What am I missing?

Richard Levine - 6 years, 5 months ago

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