2013 AMC 10B Problem 17
Attempt Problem 17 of the 2013 AMC 10B below, then check your answer against the professionally curated solution from LIVE by Po-Shen Loh. You can also try the full timed exam, view all 2013 AMC 10B solutions, or check the answer key.
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17.
Alex has red tokens and blue tokens. There is a booth where Alex can give two red tokens and receive in return a silver token and a blue token, and another booth where Alex can give three blue tokens and receive in return a silver token and a red token. Alex continues to exchange tokens until no more exchanges are possible. How many silver tokens will Alex have at the end?
Answer: E
Solution:
Suppose Alex makes exchanges at the red-token booth and exchanges at the blue-token booth.
He then has red tokens and blue tokens. At the end he must have fewer than red tokens and fewer than blue tokens.
Solving these terminal possibilities gives only two candidate final token counts: , which comes from , or , which comes from .
The final count is impossible, because the last exchange would always create either one blue token or one red token.
The final count is attainable. Starting from red and blue tokens, make blue-booth exchanges, then red-booth exchanges, then blue-booth exchanges, then red-booth exchanges, then blue-booth exchanges, and finally red-booth exchange. The red-blue counts become
Therefore Alex ends with silver tokens, and the correct answer is E .
Problem 17 in Other Years
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