
Odd period square roots
Problem 64
Published on Friday, 27th February 2004, 06:00 pm; Solved by 9824All square roots are periodic when written as continued fractions and can be written in the form:
1 |
|||
| a1 + | 1 |
||
| a2 + | 1 |
||
| a3 + ... | |||
For example, let us consider
23:
1 |
= 4 + | 1 |
||
1 |
1 + | 7 |
||
If we continue we would get the following expansion:
1 |
||||
| 1 + | 1 |
|||
| 3 + | 1 |
|||
| 1 + | 1 |
|||
| 8 + ... | ||||
The process can be summarised as follows:
| a0 = 4, | 1 |
= | 7 |
= 1 + | 7 |
|
| a1 = 1, | 7 |
= | 7( 14 |
= 3 + | 2 |
|
| a2 = 3, | 2 |
= | 2( 14 |
= 1 + | 7 |
|
| a3 = 1, | 7 |
= | 7( 7 |
= 8 + | ||
| a4 = 8, | 1 |
= | 7 |
= 1 + | 7 |
|
| a5 = 1, | 7 |
= | 7( 14 |
= 3 + | 2 |
|
| a6 = 3, | 2 |
= | 2( 14 |
= 1 + | 7 |
|
| a7 = 1, | 7 |
= | 7( 7 |
= 8 + |
It can be seen that the sequence is repeating. For conciseness, we use the notation
23 = [4;(1,3,1,8)], to indicate that the block (1,3,1,8) repeats indefinitely.
The first ten continued fraction representations of (irrational) square roots are:
2=[1;(2)], period=1
3=[1;(1,2)], period=2
5=[2;(4)], period=1
6=[2;(2,4)], period=2
7=[2;(1,1,1,4)], period=4
8=[2;(1,4)], period=2
10=[3;(6)], period=1
11=[3;(3,6)], period=2
12= [3;(2,6)], period=2
13=[3;(1,1,1,1,6)], period=5
Exactly four continued fractions, for N
13, have an odd period.
How many continued fractions for N
10000 have an odd period?