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Then you close every second locker. Then you go to every third locker and open it (if it's
closed) or close it (if it's open). Let's call this action toggling a locker. Continue toggling
every nth locker on pass number n. After 100 passes, where you toggle only locker #100,
how many lockers are open?
Devise a Plan
First we are going to make a table. We will fill the table with our clues from the story that can be
used to find a pattern. We will start off with solving a simpler problem with the first 1-10 lockers
to see if we can find a pattern. Once we find a pattern we will check if it checks out with our
statement. We will use these methods so we can find what lockers will be open after a certain
amount of passes.
2 Open, close All even numbers are closed (1st and 2nd
pass)
6 Open, close, open, close 6 is toggled on the 3rd & 6 pass (1st, 2nd,
3rd, 6th pass)
8 Open, closed, open, closed 8 is toggled on the 4th & 8th pass (1st,
2nd, 4th, & 8th pass)
9 Open, closed, open 9 is toggled on the 3rd & 9th pass (1st,
3rd & 9th pass)
10 Open, closed, open, closed 10 is toggled on the 5th and 10th pass
(1st, 2nd, 5th, & 10th pass)
The only lockers open from 1-10 are 1, 4, and 9. The difference is that these lockers have an odd
number of passes to end up open compared to the rest that are closed with an even amount of
passes. Therefore, lockers with numbers that have an even amount of factors will always end up
closed since we started with opening all the lockers first. While Lockers with an odd number of
factors will end up open.
Opened lockers (odd amount of factors) Closed Lockers (even amount of factors)
1: 1 2:1, 2
3:1, 3
4: 1, 2, 4
5:1, 5
6:1, 2, 3, 6
7:1, 7
8:1, 8
9: 1, 3, 9
Now looking at lockers 1,4, and 9 that are open we look for the pattern. We can see that these are
also numbers that can be square rooted.
1^2=1 2^2=4 3^2=9
This pattern can be seen as this formula: n^2 = opened locker
This means that only numbers that are squared from 1-100 can be opened lockers. Therefore, we
can get rid of all numbers with an even amount of factored pairs and cannot be squared.
Look back
The steps I used in carrying out my plan were to first make a table from 1-10 to solve a simpler
problem, find a pattern, and check my statements. Since it was 100 lockers I wanted to cut it
short to 1-10 to solve a simpler problem, and also help me to solve the initial problem. My
second step was to find a pattern from 1-10. All numbers would toggle on their factors. In this
step, I grouped numbers and separated them by lockers that ended up open and ones that did not.
The ones that ended up closed were numbers with an even amount of factors. While the opened
lockers had an odd amount of factors. The opened lockers can also be squared. To make sure, I
made sure to add another step to check our statements. Also, I had to make sure that every
number that can be square rooted has an odd amount of factored pairs. The last step was to find
all the lockers opened from 1-100 that had an odd amount of factored pairs and can be square
rooted. Another way to solve this problem could be using a visual aid (100s chart). Then write
the nth number of passes on the numbers we pass and toggle and label it open or closed. Have
“o” represent opened and “c “ represent close. For example: on locker 4 we would write
(1^o,2^c,4^o). Doing so for passes 1-100 or less would help us see that there is a pattern.