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Problem:
When Waldo recently did a conversion of a positive integral Celsius temperature c=275 to its Fahrenheit equivalent f (which turned out to be 527 ), he noticed to his amazement that he could have simply moved the last digit of c to the front to obtain f. Doing some intense calculations he failed to discover the next largest such example. Does one exist, and if so, what is it?
Solution:
Let c=xn⋅10n−1+...+x1⋅101+x0 with xn>0, then f=x0⋅10n−1+(c−x0)/10. We also have that f=(9/5)⋅c+32. Notice that in order for f to be integral c must be divisible by 5; this implies that x0=5 since it cannot equal 0 (since as a number f>c). Our equation then becomes (9/5)⋅c+32=5⋅10n−1+(c−5)/10 implies c=5⋅(10n−65)/17. Now it turns out that 10 is a primitive root modulo 17, and so it follows that c is integral if and only if n is of the form 16⋅m+3. When m=0 we get c=275; when m=1 we get the next highest such temperature, which is 5⋅(1019−65)/17=2941176470588235275.
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