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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Six Mathematical Puzzles

Let S = 1 + 11 + 111 + \cdots + 1\ldots 1, where the last summand has 111 decimal digits each equal to 1. What is the sum of the digits of S?

Suppose that five particles travel back and forth on the unit interval [0,1]. At the start, all five particles move to the right with the same velocity. When a particle reaches 0 or 1, it reverses direction but maintains its speed. When two particles collide, they reverse direction and maintain speed. How many particle-particle collisions occur before the five particles occupy their original positions and are moving to the right?

In how many ways can a chess Queen move from one corner of the chess board to the opposite corner, moving closer to the goal square at every step?

What is the only positive integer n such that there are exactly n incongruent triangles with integer sides and perimeter n?

How many ways can you make one million dollars using any number of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, one-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, ten-dollar bills, twenty-dollar bills, fifty-dollar bills, and hundred-dollar bills?

What is noteworthy about the multisets \{2,2\}, \{1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4\}, and \{1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,4,6\}? Can you characterize all multisets of positive integers with this property?

My math page: https://sites.google.com/site/martinerickson/

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