2020 AMC 10 B

Complete problem set with solutions and individual problem pages

Problem 12 Medium

The decimal representation of \frac{1}{20^{20}} consists of a string of zeros after the decimal point, followed by a 9 and then several more digits. How many zeros are in that initial string of zeros after the decimal point?(2020 AMC 10B, Question #12)

  • A.

    23

  • B.

    24

  • C.

    25

  • D.

    26

  • E.

    27

Answer:D

Solution 1:

\frac{1}{20^{20}}=\frac{1}{(10 \cdot 2)^{20}}=\frac{1}{10^{20} \cdot 2^{20}} Now we do some estimation. Notice that 2^{20}=1024^{2}, which means that 2^{20} is a little more than 1000^{2}=1,000,000. Multiplying it with 10^{20}, we get that the denominator is about 1 \underbrace{00 \ldots 0}_{26 \text { zeros }}. Notice that when we divide 1 by an n digit number, there are n-1 zeros before the first nonzero digit. This means that when we divide 1 by the 27 digit 1 \underbrace{00 \ldots 0}_{26 \text { zeros }}, there are integer decimal point.

Solution 2:

First rewrite \frac{1}{20^{20}} as \frac{5^{20}}{10^{40}}. Then, we know that when we write this in decimal form, there will be 40 digits after the decimal point. Therefore, we just have to find the number of digits in 5^{20}. \log 5^{20}=20 \log 5 and memming \log 5 \approx 0.69 (alternatively use the fact that \log 5=1-\log 2 ), \lfloor 20 \log 5\rfloor+1=\lfloor 20 \cdot 0.69\rfloor+1=13+1=14digits. Our answer is (D) 26