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Forum URL: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/forumctk.cgi
Forum Name: High school
Topic ID: 212
Message ID: 0
#0, power of 2
Posted by Jen on Oct-19-02 at 00:21 AM
Hi. I'm trying to settle the following problem but having difficult making further progress. Any hints or suggestions would be really appreciated. Thank you~

Does there exist a positive integer which is a power of 2, such that we can obtain another power of 2 by rearranging it's digits?

So far I only have obvious approach, that is the sum of digits of 2^a and 2^b must match if they're equal by rearranging digits of one of them. In this approach we have 2^a = 2^b (mod 9) so tha a = b (mod 6) since 2^(|a-b|) = 1 (mod 9) and 6 is the order of 2 modulo 9. This takes care of the case when the number of digits of 2^a and 2^b are equal and furthermore reveals that one of 2^a and 2^b must contain a digit 0.