2020 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 9

Problem

How many ordered pairs of integers $(x, y)$ satisfy the equation $x^{2020}+y^2=2y?$ $\textbf{(A) } 1 \qquad\textbf{(B) } 2 \qquad\textbf{(C) } 3 \qquad\textbf{(D) } 4 \qquad\textbf{(E) } \text{infinitely many}$

Solution

Rearranging the terms and and completing the square for $y$ yields the result $x^{2020}+(y-1)^2=1$ . Then, notice that $x$ can only be $0$ , $1$ and $-1$ because any value of $x^{2020}$ that is greater than 1 will cause the term $(y-1)^2$ to be less than $0$ , which is impossible as $y$ must be real. Therefore, plugging in the above values for $x$ gives the ordered pairs $(0,0)$ , $(0,2)$ , $(1,-1)$ , and $(-1,-1)$ .

Video Solution

2020 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 8	Followed by Problem 10
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25
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2020 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 9

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