Nick Tarasewicz

POW #2
Problem:
For the second POW of the year, we were asked to imagine 1,000 lockers and 1,000 students.
The students enter the building one at a time and walk by every locker. The first student opens
every single locker: the second closes every second locker (that is, all even numbered lockers).
The third student changes every third locker (that is, if the locker was open, they close it and
vice versa). This opening and closing goes on until the 1,000th student walks by all of the
lockers and closes the 1,000th locker. Which lockers will still be open after all of the students
have entered and passed by the lockers? Also, which locker was touched the most?
If you strip away the excess verbiage, this question has to deal with factors. More specifically,
which numbers have an odd number of factors, which results in an open locker door? The
second question also deals with factors, but on a broader scale of which number between 1 and
1,000 has the most factors in it?
Process:
For the first question, I wanted to see if I could depict any pattern showing which lockers are left
open. I began by building two tables depicting the described process of opening and closing
lockers. Instead of using 1,000 students and lockers, I used scenarios with 10 and 20 students
and lockers. (See the tables below.) Xs represent a closed locker, and Os represent open
lockers.

Person

Locker

10

10

Table 1: 10 Lockers
Lockers Open: 1,4,9
Locker: 1
Person:

2 3

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

o o

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Table 2: 20 Lockers
Lockers Open: 1,4,9,16
Due to my previous knowledge concerning factors, I knew that only lockers with an odd number
of factors can be open in the end because numbers with an even number of divisors (factors)
will always end up shut. Take for example 14, which has 4 factors (1,2,7,14). If you go through
the pattern of opening and closing lockers 4 times (that is open, shut, open, shut), youll notice
that the locker ends up closed. This is true for any number with an even number of factors.
However, if you look at the table above, the doors that remain open always have an odd number
of factors (for example, 16 has 5 factors: 1,2,4,8,16). The question boils down to which numbers
always have an odd number of factors?
This is when I experienced a flashback to 6th grade math class where my teacher was telling us
that all numbers that are perfect squares always have an odd number of factors. I dont know
why that information stuck with me this long, but Im thankful it did.
Perfect squares are numbers that result from any rational number being multiplied by itself. An
example would be 9, which is 3*3. This means that at minimum, every perfect square will
always have at least 3 factors: 1, the rational number being squared, and itself. Just to check
that this conjecture was accurate, I looked at which lockers were left open in the figures above.
They are all highlighted in yellow and they are all perfect squares!

Next all that I had to do was a quick search online for all of the perfect squares less than 1,000,
and I got my answer to the first question.

The second question was a bit more complex. Going into it, I knew that more than likely, the
answer would have 12 as a factor. This is because 12 is the number less than 20 that has the
most factors and also is a multiple of 3 prime numbers.
Another simple online search yielded me with the answer to this question, but I needed to know
why it works, and find a general method for getting an answer regardless of the number of
lockers.
After a bit of assistance from Kyle and some collaboration with Rowland, I believe I finally
figured out a basic guess and check method.
Kyle explained to me that every number can be broken down into a product of prime numbers
(for example, 2,3,7 and so on). You can take the smallest prime and multiply it by itself until it
goes over the number youre working with. (In this case it is 1,000.) 210 = 1,024 so youd have to
use 29, which equals 512. Because you multiplied 2 by itself 9 times, 512 has 9 factors.
However, 512 is a lot smaller than 1,000 so you can still make it larger by multiplying it by other
prime numbers by starting with 28. (See below for an example.)
28 x 31 = 768
24 x 32 x 51 = 720
However, for some reason the above thought process wasnt quite clicking with my brain so I set
out to find my own way of finding how many factors a number has. Instantly, I tried working with
the factor tree, where you continually break down a number until you are just left with its primes.
(This technique is often used when attempting to reduce radicals.) By taking and counting how
many of the same type of prime numbers goes into the original number, and multiply them all
together, you get the prime factorization. If you then take the exponents of each of the prime
factors, add one to it, and then multiply them all together, youll get how many factors that
number has. The reason you add one to each exponent before multiplying them together is
because there is always another factor not being accounted for, and that is one. By increasing
the exponents, you are able to correct this discrepancy. This made more sense to me because
you are starting with a number and working backwards instead of vice versa. (The figure below
shows an example of this process.)

720 = 24 x 32 x 51
# Factors = (4+1) (2+1) (1+1)
=5x3x2
720 = 30 Factors
With this approach, all you have to do is make an educated guess as to which numbers less
than 1,000 might have the most factors, and then test them using the above approach. Luckily,
you dont have to guess as to what number might have the most factors. You can be aided by
knowing that it will be an even number. (Thats because evens have more factors than odds.)I It
has to be a multiple of 12 because 12 is the first number that has the most number of different
prime factors included in its prime factorization. Also, the number will end in zero; otherwise five
wont be included as one of the prime factors and because of the way prime factorization works
-- the more different primes that make up the number, the better. Coupled with this approach, I
looked at all of the plausible numbers less than 1,000 (that is 720, 840, and 900) and finally
proved why my googled answer was correct.
This method may not be the most efficient, but it does allow you to get an answer constantly
after some educated guess-and-check work.

Solution:
After 1,000 students pass through the hallway, there will be 31 open lockers. The locker that
was touched the most during this process is locker #840.
To consistently know how many lockers are left open for any given number of lockers, all you
have to do is count up how many perfect square numbers there are that are less than the total
number of lockers.

To figure out which locker is touched the most, all you have to do is find which number less than
the total number of lockers has the most factors. This is accomplished using educated
guesswork and the factor-tree method described above.
Justification:
The answer to how many locker doors is correct because once you count up all of the perfect
squares less than 1,000, theres only 31. Also, all of my peers with whom I check the answer
also got 31. (No one to my knowledge got any other answer.) If this answer was incorrect, it
would simply be a mistake in counting up the number of perfect squares.
The second answer is known to be correct because numerous sources on the internet all agree
that 840 has the most factors . Just in case, I made sure to check all of the plausible answers by
hand as well; 840 was still correct, no doubt about it.