SOLUTION: find the smallest number multiplied by 3456 will make a perfect square?

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Question 624426: find the smallest number multiplied by 3456 will make a perfect square?


Found 2 solutions by Theo, Arfat Haider:
Answer by Theo(13342) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
i did this by brute force because i didn't know any formula that would allow me to find it directly.
there may be one but i don't know what it is.
the brute force method used excel.
i simply multiplied 3456 by numbers starting from 1 and going up and then checked to see if i got a perfect square or not.
the answer is 6
3456 * 6 is a perfect square and multiplying by 6 is the smallest integer i could multiply 3456 by before getting a perfect square as the result.
here's the results of the brute force method.
3456	1	58.78775383	
3456	2	83.13843876	
3456	3	101.8233765	
3456	4	117.5755077	
3456	5	131.4534138	
3456	6	144                   this is a perfect square
3456	7	155.5377768	
3456	8	166.2768775	
3456	9	176.3632615	
3456	10	185.9032006	
3456	11	194.9769217	
3456	12	203.646753	
3456	13	211.9622608	
3456	14	219.9636334	
3456	15	227.6839915	
3456	16	235.1510153	
3456	17	242.3881185	
3456	18	249.4153163	
3456	19	256.249878	
3456	20	262.9068276	
3456	21	269.3993318	
3456	22	275.739007	
3456	23	281.936163	
3456	24	288                   this is a perfect square
3456	25	293.9387691

if there is a rule, i don't know it, as i said before.
it's interesting that the next perfect square is multiplying by a multiple of 6, specifically 4 * 6.
note that 6 by itself is not a perfect square even though 4 by itself is a perfect square.
no real relationship there that i can figure out.
if you're looking for a formula to determine the smallest multiple to get a perfect square i don't have it, but you do have your answer is that's all you wanted.
i did a search of the web and i did find a way to determine it.
the link i found is here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090616105542AAKgSOq
basically, you break the number down into factors and each factor has to be a perfect square.
if there's a number that's not a perfect square, then that number is the number you have to multiply your original number by in order to get it to be a perfect square.
applying that concept to your number, we get the following:
3456 / 144 = 24 which means that:
3456 = 144 * 24
144 is a perfect square, but 24 is not.
we can, however break down 24 into a multiple of perfect squares.
24 = 2*12 = 3*8 = 4*6
4 is a perfect square, so we get:
3456 = 144*4*6
since 144*4 is equal to 576 and 576 is a perfect square (24*24), we can reduce this to:
3456 = 576*6
6 is not a perfect square, but if we multiply it by 6 we will get a perfect square, then that's the smallest we can get.
this is because:
6 is not a perfect square but it can be broken down into:
6 = 2*3 = 1*6 neither of which is a perfect square.
that makes 6 the smallest multiple of 3456 to get a perfect square.
brute force method confirms that:
6	1	2.449489743	
6	2	3.464101615	
6	3	4.242640687	
6	4	4.898979486	
6	5	5.477225575	
6	6	6                this is a perfrect square

Answer by Arfat Haider(1) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
its so simple
use method of prime factorization to solve this problem.
see this attachement
.