2020 AMC 10 B

Complete problem set with solutions and individual problem pages

Problem 9 Easy

How many ordered pairs of integers (x, y) satisfy the equation x^{2020}+y^{2}=2 y ?(2020 AMC 10B, Question #9)

  • A.

    1

  • B.

    2

  • C.

    3

  • D.

    4

  • E.

    infinitely many

Answer:D

Solution 1: Rearranging the terms and and completing the square for y yields the result x^{2020}+(y-1)^{2}=1. Then, notice that x can only be 0,1 and -1 because any value of x^{2020} that is greater than 1 will cause the term (y-1)^{2} to be less than 0 , which is impossible as Ymust be real. Therefore, plugging in the above values for X gives the ordered pairs (0,0),(1,1),(-1,1), and (0,2) gives a total of (D)4 ordered pairs.

Solution 2:

Bringing all of the terms to the LHS, we see a quadratic equation y^{2}-2 y+x^{2020}=0in terms of y. Applying the quadratic formula, we \text { get } y=\frac{2 \pm \sqrt{4-4 \cdot 1 \cdot x^{2020}}}{2}=\frac{2 \pm \sqrt{4\left(1-x^{2020}\right)}}{2} \text { in } order for y to be real, which it must be given the stipulation that we are seeking integral answers, we know that the discriminant, 4\left(1-x^{2020}\right) must be nonnegative. Therefore, 4\left(1-x^{2020}\right) \geq 0 \Longrightarrow x^{2020} \leq 1_{\text {Here, }} we see that we must split the inequality into a compound, resulting in -1 \leq x \leq 1 The only integers that satisfy this are x \in\{-1,0,1\}. Plugging these values back into the quadratic equation, we see that x=\{-1,1\} both produce a discriminant of 0 , meaning that there is only 1 solution for Y. If x=\{0\}, then the discriminant is nonzero, therefore resulting in two solutions for Y. Thus, the answer is 2 \cdot 1+1 \cdot 2=(\mathbf{D}) 4