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Number theory Difficulty 4.8 AIME Find the answer

Find the number of terms n2012n \leq 2012 such that an=3n+112a_{n}=\frac{3^{n+1}-1}{2} is divisible by 7.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

To demonstrate that 7an=3n+1127 \mid a_{n}=\frac{3^{n+1}-1}{2} is equivalent to showing that 3n+110mod73^{n+1}-1 \equiv 0 \bmod 7. However 3n+11=0mod7n+10mod63^{n+1}-1=0 \bmod 7 \Longrightarrow n+1 \equiv 0 \bmod 6, hence the values of n2012n \leq 2012 are 5,11,17,,20095,11,17, \ldots, 2009, which is in total 2009+16=335\frac{2009+1}{6}=335 possible terms.

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