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Browse High School Number Theory
Stars indicate particularly interesting answers or good places to begin browsing.

Selected answers to common questions:
    Diophantine equations.
    Infinite number of primes?
    Testing for primality.
    What is 'mod'?

Proving the Square Root of a Prime is Irrational [07/15/1998]
How do you prove that if p is prime, the square root of p is irrational?

Public Key Encryption [03/29/1999]
Examples and discussion of operations used for encryption, including mod.

Pythagorean Quadruplets [12/28/1998]
I am trying to find a formula that generates Pythagorean quadruplets a,b,c,d such that a^2 + b^2 + c^2 = d^2.

Can the Pythagorean theorem be done with 3 different numbers?

Pythagorean Triple [8/28/1996]

Pythagorean Triples [10/07/1997]
What is a Pythagorean triple?

Pythagorean Triples [04/14/1997]
Why can't all the numbers in a Pythagorean triple be prime?

Pythagorean Triples [07/14/1997]
Is there a formula to determine the solutions to the following equations? a^2 + b^2 = c^2, a^3 + b^3 + c^3 = d^3...

Pythagorean Triples [11/19/1997]
I need to know the first five Pythagorean triples after 3,4,5...

Pythagorean Triples [05/22/1999]
What is the general formula for all sides of any triple?

Pythagorean Triples [05/31/1999]
Is there a procedure for finding Pythagorean triples?

Pythagorean Triples [5/18/1995]

Pythagorean Triples Divisible by 5 [11/17/2000]
Do all right triangles with integer side lengths have a side with a length divisible by 5?

Pythagorean Triple with 71 [12/07/1997]
Is there a Pythagorean triple that contains the number 71?

Quadratic Residues [06/30/1998]
I need a fundamental explanation of the concept of quadratic residues.

Quadratic Residues and Sums of Squares [10/28/1998]
In one of the lemmas in number theory, if p is an odd prime number, then there exist x, y such that x^2+y^2+1=kp...

A Quartic Diophantine Equation: 10657 + 11579x^2 + x^4 = y^2 [12/29/2008]
Doctor Vogler helps a student look for integer solutions to a quartic polynomial by noticing a difference of squares in its coefficients and factoring its constant term.

Ramsey's Theorem and Infinite Sequence [06/01/1999]
Ramsey's Theorem applied to divisibility in infinite sequences.

Rational and Irrational Numbers: Multiplication, Division [10/15/2001]
I would like the rules explained for: irrational * irrational; rational * rational; irrational/rational.

Rationalizing a Denominator with Multiple Cube Roots [04/22/2011]
A student of field theory wonders how to remove the cube roots from the denominator of 1/(a + b*CBRT(q) + c*CBRT(q)^2). Building on the conjugacy of square roots, Doctor Vogler writes out the required conjugates.

Real and Rational Numbers [02/27/2001]
How can I show that the number of rational numbers between 0 and 1 is the same as the number of natural numbers (considering the ordering of fractions: 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4, 3/4, 1/5, 2/5...)?

Real Numbers [08/08/1997]
What exactly is a real number?

Reasoning about Integers [10/06/2004]
When positive integers p and q are divided by an even positive integer t, they have remainders 2 and t/2, respectively. What is the remainder when the product pq is divided by t?


Rectangular Solids from Blocks [09/25/1998]

Recurrence Relation for a Pell Equation [11/09/1999]
Can you help me find a recurrence relation for generating solutions to the Pell equation x^2 - 5y^2 = 1?

Relationship Between GCF and LCM [05/22/2002]
What is the exact relationship between the gcf or gcd and the lcm of two numbers?

Relatively Prime [10/07/1999]

Relatively Prime Pythagorean Triples [09/13/1997]
Questions about Pythagorean triples.

Remainders, Pigeons, and Pigeonholes [03/26/2003]
Given 17 integers, prove that it is always possible to select 5 of the 17 whose sum is divisible by 5.

Remainder when Dividing Large Numbers [04/17/2001]
How can I find the remainder when (12371^56 + 34)^28 is divided by 111?

Repeating Decimals [04/28/1999]
I am interested in finding longer repeating groups in number tails of repeating decimals.

Repeating Decimals - Rational or Irrational? [09/11/2001]
Are 0.252252225... and 0.125126127... rational or irrational?

Repeating Digits of Fractions [04/28/1999]
Do you know any theorems relating to the length of the repeating portion of the decimal representation of fractions?

Reversal of Age Digits Every Eleven Years [11/06/2007]
Every 11 years, my age is the exact reverse of my mother's age. When I was 13 she was 31, when I was 24 she was 42, and so on. Why does this work?

Reversed Digits Theorem [06/24/1999]
For a positive integer abc..., if (abc...)^n = xyz... and if (a+b+c+...)^n = x+y+z+..., how can I prove that (...cba)^n = ...zyx?

Reverse Modulus Operator [10/09/2001]
Is there an operator that would return 2 when we we do 6 * 0, * being this new operator?

Roots of ax^f2 bx+c = 0 [05/22/1997]
Prove that if a,b,c are odd integers, then the roots of ax^2 bx+c=0 are not rational.

Rounding Negative Numbers [05/23/2007]
I was wondering what -0.5 is rounded to the nearest integer?

RSA Encryption [04/25/2002]
Decrypt the encrypted message in ciphertext C to find the original plaintext, a string of English letters.

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