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Is there a full square in the form XX?

Can one get a full square by writing twice the same natural number X? For example, if X=123, then XX=123123, which is not a full square.

Update:

I completely forgot that I've already asked this question:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AqjUY...

It came in my mind again after reading Dragans'question:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aqay7...

In this case, expressions of the type XX are obtained by taking powers of abababac...

Anyway, Ben's and Mielu Istetz's answers complement nicely previous solutions.

3 Answers

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  • Ben
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Since such a number is X*(10^n + 1), let's examine the number 1000...01. If this is squarefree, then for our number to be a perfect square we would need X>=10^n+1, which won't work, so we seek an n to make 10^n+1 "squareful". The first such is n=11, where

    10^11+1 = 11^2 * 23 * 4093 * 8779

    so first have a look at the number 23*4093*8779, which will multiply 10^11+1 to give a square. This number turns out to be too small (only 9 digits), so we'd have extra 0's padding the number. So multiply by an appropriate square, say for instance 2^6, to get

    X=52,892,561,984

    Then 5,289,256,198,452,892,561,984 = 2^6 11^2 23^2 4093^2 8779^2 is one of the desired numbers.

    As long as there are numbers of the form 10^n+1 which are not squarefree (I would expect there are infinitely many of them; indeed, it may be the case that they are only squarefree for finitely many n; but now I'm treading beyond my number theory knowledge), we can find more examples. Indeed, for each such n, we should be able to come up with at least several examples.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Ben's answer is great, just some comments:

    There are an infinity of them and the smallest one is 1322314049613223140496=36363636364^2

    A method to generate some of them is n^2 where

    n=[10^(11k)+1]/11*10^s, for any k odd, where s is a shifting power.

    This is because 10^(11k)+1=0(mod 11^2) and

    n^2=[10^(11k)+1]/11^2*[10^(11k)+1]

    *10^(2s)

  • 1 decade ago

    I don't understand this ask your teacher she'll help you out about it!

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