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smc

number theory senior

Problem

The number obtained from the last two nonzero digits of is equal to . What is ?
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Solution
We will use the fact that for any integer , First, we find that the number of factors of in is equal to . Let . The we want is therefore the last two digits of , or . If instead we find , we know that , what we are looking for, could be , , , or . Only one of these numbers will be a multiple of four, and whichever one that is will be the answer, because has to be a multiple of 4. If we divide by to create by taking out all the factors of in , we can write as where where every multiple of 5 is replaced by the number with all its factors of 5 removed. Specifically, every number in the form is replaced by , and every number in the form is replaced by . The number can be grouped as follows: Where the first line is composed of the numbers in that aren't multiples of five, the second line is the multiples of five and not 25 after they have been divided by five, and the third line is multiples of 25 after they have been divided by 25. Using the identity at the beginning of the solution, we can reduce to Using the fact that (or simply the fact that if you have your powers of 2 memorized), we can deduce that . Therefore . Finally, combining with the fact that yields .
Final answer
A