Ivan Shishkin, Rye (1878)

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Divisibility of an even number

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Solution

Solution by Ancient Tree · EN

Suppose that n1n-1 divides 2n2n. This means that there exists an integer kk such that 2n=k(n1)=knk2n=k(n-1)=kn-k. We obtain that kk is divisible by nn : there exists an integer ll such that k=nlk=nl. Plugging this back in the equation above, we get that 2n=nl(n1)2n=nl(n-1), and because nn is non-zero, we obtain 2=l(n1)2=l(n-1).
n1n-1 is therefore a divisor of 22, which means it is either 11 or 22, and so n=2n=2 or n=3n=3. We now just have to manually check if these cases work : for n=2n=2, 44 is indeed divisible by 1 ; and for n=3n=3, 66 is indeed divisible by 22.

So the only solutions are n=2n=2 and n=3n=3.

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