Points on a curve

Algebra Level 5

On the x y xy -coordinate plane, A 0 = ( 0 , 0 ) , A 1 , A 2 , A 3 A_{0}=(0,0), A_{1}, A_{2}, A_{3}\cdots ... are points that lie on the x x -axis and B 1 , B 2 , B 3 , B 4 B_{1}, B_{2}, B_{3}, B_{4}\cdots are points that lie on the curve y = x y=\sqrt{x} such that for all natural numbers k k , the triangle formed by A k 1 A_{k-1} , A k A_{k} and B k B_{k} is equilateral. Joel randomly picks a natural number l l . What is the probability that A l A_{l} has integer coordinates? Give your answer to 3 decimal places.


The answer is 0.667.

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1 solution

Patrick Corn
Aug 31, 2014

It seems like you should specify that A 0 A_0 is the origin. In that case, the x x -coordinate of A k A_k is k ( k + 1 ) 3 \frac{k(k+1)}3 , so A k A_k has integral coordinates if and only if k ≢ 1 k \not\equiv 1 mod 3 3 . So the answer is 2/3 \fbox{2/3} .

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