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JMO mentoring scheme answers

Charitable Trust
October 2011 paper

1 Ans : 3.5 kg
For convenience to avoid fractions assume you use 4x kg of flour for the flaky pastry. This requires 3x fat for the flaky
pastry and leaves 3 - 4x flour for the short pastry. Fat is ½ of flour for short pastry so the short pastry requires 1.5 - 2x fat.
Total fat used is 3x + (1.5 - 2x) which equals 2 so x = 0.5. Flour (3 kg) Fat (2 kg) Pastry
You could set out your working in a table like this : 4x 3x 7x
3 - 4x 1.5 - 2x
2 Ans : C
The pattern recurs every 8 characters so it is the 2008th character which ends the last complete pattern.

3 Ans : 17640 °
Any vertex can be joined by diagonals to 97 others producing 98 triangles.

4 Only 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 9 can occur in the units place of a square number.

5 Ans : 36 °
The exterior angles of a triangle add up to 360°. Thus the exterior angles are 96°, 120° and 144°. The largest exterior
angle is adjacent to the least interior angle.

6 There are 8 ways for an even number of heads out of the 16 arrangements for 4 coins. E.g. 2 heads can occur as HHTT,
HTHT, HTTH, THHT, THTH, TTHH. To convince your friend you would need to write them all out for her.

7 Ð BAD = 90° because BD is the diameter of the circle through A.

Using Pythagoras’s rule on D BAD we can work out that BD² = 5.

8 Ans : p² - q = 23 which is prime

All prime numbers except 2 are odd. For p - q, p and p + q to be prime, p and p + q must both be odd so q is even.
Hence q = 2 since q has to be a multiple of 2 but can not be a higher multiple than 2 itself. Secondly, one of any set of 3
evenly spaced integers must be a multiple of 3. [We say they are in arithmetic progression.]
Thus one of the numbers must be 3 as it can not be a higher multiple of 3. Hence q = 2 and p - q = 3.

9 Ans : Thursday
The last method we need to use is to count the days in total! 14 Sep is on Wed in 2011 but on Tue in 2010 because each
year advances the day of the week by one position. In leap years it advances it by 2 positions because 366 divided by 7 is
52 weeks with 2 days remaining. Now we note that 2011 - 1752 = 259 years have passed since the Gregorian calendar
started in England. This includes 62 leap years; 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, 2000 was a leap year and Feb in the
leap year 1752 had already passed. Thus the day of the week has advanced 321 places since 1752. Dividing 321 by 7
leaves 6 over so we have to work back 6 from Wed.
In 1752 the (Julian) calendar in England was brought into alignment with the Gregorian calendar used in the most of
western Europe. The day after 2 Sep 1752 was 14 Sep 1752. Not only this, the year number used to change on 25 Mar
(9 months before Xmas Day), not on 1 Jan. Thus the 1 Jan previous to this was in 1751, not 1752! This is the reason that
the tax year still starts on 5 Apr. Confused?
Isaac Newton was born on Xmas Day 1642 but at this time the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead, i.e. by today's
calendar he was born on 4 Jan 1643. Thus historians have to be careful interpreting dates in original documents.
The Gregorian calendar ensures that the calendar stays in alignment with the seasons.; the problem was that the Julian
calendar had too many leap years to make this work.

10 Ans : 8 4 6 3 1
a cannot be 1. (Why?) Possible pairs for a and b are 2,1; 3,1; etc. up to 9,1; 4,2; 6,2; 8,2; 6,3; 9,3; 8,4 .
Process of elimination yields the answer. For example a, b and c could be 8,4,2 but then d has to be 1 and we are stuck
because e can not be 5. It is interesting to widen the problem, search for more general rules and allow all positive integers
to be used.