The Light Pole Riddle
Number Theory
Level
2
A painter has been assigned the task of painting all the light poles on the highway, but he only has to paint only some specific poles which follow the pattern: 1st, 4th, 9th, 16th, 25th and so on. If there are a total of 1000441 poles, how many poles does the painter actually paint??
The answer is 1000.
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1 solution
The painter paint the posts of square numbers....if there are 1000441 posts so the amount of squares among this number is actually the amount of posts the painter has painted.....by square rooting 1000441 we get a result like 1,000.2204756952 so there ar actually 1000 square number as the square of 1001 is 1002001 which crosses the boundary and the square of 1000 is 1000000 within the limit......therefore the answer is 1000