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Forum URL: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/forumctk.cgi
Forum Name: High school
Topic ID: 212
#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.


#1, RE: power of 2
Posted by Adhara on Nov-05-02 at 11:15 AM
In response to message #0
Well... i can give you an example of one.
12^2=144 and 21^2=441(if this is what you ment).

#2, RE: power of 2
Posted by Jen on Nov-10-02 at 07:07 PM
In response to message #1
what i meant by power of 2 was that the number has a form 2^n where n is an integer. Neither 12^2 nor 21^2 is a power of two since one can't find an integer n so that 2^n = 12^2 or 2^n = 21^2.