Making it a Perfect Square

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Find the largest element in the set S S of the smallest possible 126 126 consecutive odd integers such that the sum of all the elements in S S is a non-zero perfect square.


The answer is 139.

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1 solution

Brian Yao
Mar 28, 2019

Let x x be the smallest element of such a set S S ; then we have s S s = i = 0 125 x + 2 i = 126 x + 2 i = 0 125 i = 126 x + 126 125 = 126 ( x + 125 ) . \sum_{s \in S} s = \sum_{i = 0}^{125} x + 2 * i = 126x + 2 \sum_{i = 0}^{125} i = 126x + 126 \cdot 125 = 126(x + 125). For this sum to be a perfect square, each of its prime factors must appear an even number of times in the prime factorization. So far we see the sum is divisible by 126 = 2 3 2 7 126 = 2 \cdot 3^2 \cdot 7 , so the smallest perfect square the sum could equal is 2 2 3 2 7 2 2^2 \cdot 3^2 \cdot 7^2 . To achieve this, we need the x + 125 x + 125 term to provide additional powers of 2 and 7 so that their powers are even. In particular, since we are looking for the smallest such x x , we choose x + 125 = 2 7 = 14 x + 125 = 2 \cdot 7 = 14 . From here we derive x = 111 x = -111 , and so the largest element of S S is x + 2 125 = 139 x + 2 \cdot 125 = \boxed{139} .

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