2012 AMC 10A Exam Solutions
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All of the real AMC 8 and AMC 10 problems in our complete solution collection are used with official permission of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
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1.
Cagney can frost a cupcake every seconds and Lacey can frost a cupcake every seconds. Working together, how many cupcakes can they frost in minutes?
Solution:
Cagney can make cupcakes per minute, and Lacey can make
In minutes, they can make
Thus, D is the correct answer.
2.
A square with side length is cut in half, creating two congruent rectangles. What are the dimensions of one of these rectangles?
Solution:
Note that the one of the sides remains the same as the original square.
This means that one dimension is The other dimension is the original side cut in half, which is
Thus, E is the correct answer.
3.
A bug crawls along a number line, starting at It crawls to then turns around and crawls to How many units does the bug crawl altogether?
Solution:
It crawls a distance of when it moves from to It then travels a distance of as it moves from to
The total distance is then
Thus, E is the correct answer.
4.
Let and What is the smallest possible degree measure for
Solution:
Note that both of the angles share the ray To minimize the desired degree, we want to be between and
This would make
Thus, C is the correct answer.
5.
Last year adult cats, half of whom were female, were brought into the Smallville Animal Shelter. Half of the adult female cats were accompanied by a litter of kittens. The average number of kittens per litter was What was the total number of cats and kittens received by the shelter last year?
Solution:
We have that there are female cats. We then have that cats that have kittens.
Since the average number of kittens per litter is the total number of kittens is
The total number of cats and kittens is then
Thus, B is the correct answer.
6.
The product of two positive numbers is The reciprocal of one of these numbers is times the reciprocal of the other number. What is the sum of the two numbers?
Solution:
Let the two numbers be and such that
We get that since is positive.
Then
The desired sum is then
Thus, D is the correct answer.
7.
In a bag of marbles, of the marbles are blue and the rest are red. If the number of red marbles is doubled and the number of blue marbles stays the same, what fraction of the marbles will be red?
Solution:
WLOG, let the number of marbles in the bag be Since we only care about ratios, we can do this. Then there are blue marbles and red marbles.
Doubling the red marbles gives us of them. Then the fraction of red marbles is
Thus, C is the correct answer.
8.
The sums of three whole numbers taken in pairs are and What is the middle number?
Solution:
Let the three numbers be where None of them are equal, since all three sums are different.
Then and
Adding all three equations together gives us
Then from which we can subtract to get
Thus, D is the correct answer.
9.
A pair of six-sided dice are labeled so that one die has only even numbers (two each of and ), and the other die has only odd numbers (two of each and ). The pair of dice is rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers on the tops of the two dice is
Solution:
The pairs of numbers that sum to are
There is a chance that we get any of these pairs.
There are pairs, which means that the total probability that the rolls sum to is
Thus, D is the correct answer.
10.
Mary divides a circle into sectors. The central angles of these sectors, measured in degrees, are all integers and they form an arithmetic sequence. What is the degree measure of the smallest possible sector angle?
Solution:
Let be the smallest possible sector angle and be the difference in the arithmetic sequence.
Then we have that is the sum of the arithmetic sequence.
We have that this sums to so
We want to minimize so we maximize If then is not an integer, so and
Thus, C is the correct answer.
11.
Externally tangent circles with centers at points and have radii of lengths and respectively. A line externally tangent to both circles intersects ray at point What is
Solution:
Let be Note that and are similar due to angle-angle (tangent lines are perpendicular to radii).
Then Cross-multiplying gives us
Thus, D is the correct answer.
12.
A year is a leap year if and only if the year number is divisible by (such as ) or is divisible by but not (such as ). The th anniversary of the birth of novelist Charles Dickens was celebrated on February a Tuesday. On what day of the week was Dickens born?
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Solution:
On a typical year with days, moving one year into the future moves the day of the week forward one since
On a leap year however, the day of the week gets moved forward twice since there is an extra day.
Fifty of the years between and are multiples of but we have to discard which leaves us with leap years.
Therefore, moving back years means we have to go back days, which means we move back days in the week.
This takes us back to Friday, which is the day that corresponds to February
Thus, A is the correct answer.
13.
An iterative average of the numbers and is computed the following way. Arrange the five numbers in some order. Find the mean of the first two numbers, then find the mean of that with the third number, then the mean of that with the fourth number, and finally the mean of that with the fifth number. What is the difference between the largest and smallest possible values that can be obtained using this procedure?
Solution:
Let the order of the numbers be
Then the iterative average is
To minimize this, we make the order which gives us a sum of
To maximize it, we have to reverse this order to get an average of
The difference between these is
Thus, C is the correct answer.
14.
Chubby makes nonstandard checkerboards that have squares on each side. The checkerboards have a black square in every corner and alternate red and black squares along every row and column. How many black squares are there on such a checkerboard?
Solution:
Note that there are rows with black tiles and rows with black tiles.
This can seen by observing that the first row has black tiles, and all the other rows alternate with and tiles.
Then, due to the alternating pattern, there will be a total of rows with tiles, and the other rows have tiles.
The total number of black squares is then
Thus, B is the correct answer.
15.
Three unit squares and two line segments connecting two pairs of vertices are shown. What is the area of
Solution:
We can use coordinate geometry to figure out where the intersection of the two lines occurs.
Let be the origin and Then the slope of the line through is which makes the equation of the line The slope of the line through is The -intercept is This makes the equation of this line
Equating the equations, we get
This makes the -coordinate of
The area of triangle is then
Thus, B is the correct answer.
16.
Three runners start running simultaneously from the same point on a -meter circular track. They each run clockwise around the course maintaining constant speeds of and meters per second. The runners stop once they are all together again somewhere on the circular course. How many seconds do the runners run?
Solution:
Let us find the amount of time that it takes for the runner running at meters per second to lap the second fastest person.
We must have that where is the amount of time it takes for the faster runner to lap the other.
Note that which means that these two runners always intersect at the starting line.
We now have to find the least time, such that is a multiple of and the fastest runner ends up at the starting line.
Every seconds, the fastest runner runs meters. Then in seconds, the fastest runner runs meters, which is a whole number of laps.
Thus, C is the correct answer.
17.
Let and be relatively prime positive integers with and What is
Solution:
Recall that we can factor Canceling out this factor gives us that
Cross-multiplying and rearranging gives us Since we can divide through by to get
Applying the quadratic formula and noting that gives us that
Since and are relatively prime, we have that and Their difference is
Thus, C is the correct answer.
18.
The closed curve in the figure is made up of congruent circular arcs each of length where each of the centers of the corresponding circles is among the vertices of a regular hexagon of side What is the area enclosed by the curve?
Solution:
Note that the region enclosed by the curve but outside the hexagon consists of sectors with angle
This means that together they form whole circles with radius Now to find the area of the region inside both the hexagon and the curve.
This area can be found by finding the area of the hexagon and subtracting out the areas of the sectors outside the curve.
There are three circles that together form a whole circle. The area of the hexagon can be given by
The desired area is then
Thus, E is the correct answer.
19.
Paula the painter and her two helpers each paint at constant, but different, rates. They always start at AM, and all three always take the same amount of time to eat lunch.
On Monday the three of them painted of a house, quitting at PM. On Tuesday, when Paula wasn't there, the two helpers painted only of the house and quit at PM. On Wednesday Paula worked by herself and finished the house by working until P.M.
How long, in minutes, was each day's lunch break?
Solution:
Let Paula work at a rate of per hour and the helpers combined work at a rate of Let be the duration of the lunch break.
Then we have the following equations.
Adding the second and third equations together gives us We can then subtract the first equation from this to get
We can now substitute this into the second equation, which gives us Finally, subtracting this from the third equation gets us
Plugging in this value gives us which is the same as minutes.
Thus, D is the correct answer.
20.
A square is partitioned into unit squares. Each unit square is painted either white or black with each color being equally likely, chosen independently and at random.
The square is then rotated clockwise about its center, and every white square in a position formerly occupied by a black square is painted black. The colors of all other squares are left unchanged. What is the probability the grid is now entirely black?
Solution:
Since the center square does not get affected by the rotation, we have that it must be black.
Now, let us analyze the corners. Clearly, if they are all black, that works. If only one is white, that also works.
If two are white, they must diagonal from each other, since otherwise a white will move onto a white, keeping it white.
There is no way for three or all four of them to be white, since that ensures a white square will move onto a white square.
This gives us possible colorings for the corners. Similarly, we have that there are also working colorings for the edges.
This gives us a total probability of
Thus, A is the correct answer.
21.
Let points Points and are midpoints of line segments and respectively. What is the area of
Solution:
Note that since it is a midsegment of Similarly, and
We also have that and are perpendicular to the -plane, which means that they are perpendicular to and
This tells us that is rectangle since We have
We also have that
The area of is then
Thus, C is the correct answer.
22.
The sum of the first positive odd integers is more than the sum of the first positive even integers. What is the sum of all possible values of
Solution:
Recall that the sum of the first odd numbers is and the first even numbers is
We have that
We can view this equation as a quadratic in terms of as follows.
We can apply the quadratic formula to get
We have that and are integers, so must be a square number. Also, since we add and divide by this must be odd.
Let
Squaring and rearranging gives us
Note that
Given the values for and we have that the difference between the two is
The possible pairs of values are
These pairs contribute the following values for respectively: Then the possible values for are and
Thus, A is the correct answer.
23.
Adam, Benin, Chiang, Deshawn, Esther, and Fiona have internet accounts. Some, but not all, of them are internet friends with each other, and none of them has an internet friend outside this group. Each of them has the same number of internet friends. In how many different ways can this happen?
Solution:
We case on the value of friends that each person has. This value ranges from to since all of them are not friends.
Note that the cases for and friends correspond with the case for and friends, since choosing who are friends determines who are not friends.
Case 1: everyone has friend
This means that the people must split up into pairs where the people in each pair are friends.
There are choices for the friend for the first person. This leaves people remaining.
There are then choices for the friend of the next person. The remaining people are then forced to be friends.
Therefore, there are possibilities for this case.
Case 2: everyone has friends
There are two possibilities for this case. There could be two triples where everyone in a triple is friends with each other.
For this possibility, there are ways to choose the people in the first pair. We have to divide by since we can swap the pairs. This gives us configurations.
The second possibility is if the friends form a hexagon where the person at each vertex is friends with the adjacent people.
The first person can be placed anywhere on the hexagon. There are ways to choose the people adjacent to this person.
The final people can placed in ways in the remaining spots. This case then has a total number of configurations.
The total number of arrangements is then have
Thus, B is the correct answer.
24.
Let and be positive integers with such that and What is
Solution:
Adding together the equations gives us
We can group terms and factor this to get
Note that every term on the left hand side is a positive square integer. The only triple of squares that add to is and
We have that is the biggest difference among the three pairs. Therefore,
We cannot discern which of the other terms we can match with the other squares. Let us try and
Plugging in these values into the first equation gives us Simplifying yields Since is not divisible by we have that and
Plugging these in again and solving gives us
Thus, E is the correct answer.
25.
Real numbers and are chosen independently and at random from the interval for some positive integer The probability that no two of and are within 1 unit of each other is greater than What is the smallest possible value of
Solution:
This problem lends itself to geometric probability since we can view the interval as a range on an axis.
WLOG, let
Then we have that the points which satisfy this restriction form a tetrahedron.
The height of this tetrahedron is and the base has an area of This makes the volume
Now we have to apply the restrictions from the problem statement. We need to find the region where
From our ordering condition that we imposed, these inequalities reduce to
These two restrictions form another tetrahedron as shown below.
Note that in the new tetrahedron, all the dimensions have been reduced by This makes the height and the base
The area is then
The desired probability is then
Plugging in all the answer choices, we get that the smallest value such that this fraction is greater than is
Thus, D is the correct answer.