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Nested Square Roots (Posted on 2025-02-07) Difficulty: 3 of 5
For how many positive integers n is √(n + √(n + √(n + √n))) an integer?

No Solution Yet Submitted by Danish Ahmed Khan    
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Solution Solution Comment 4 of 4 |
I will start with a small theorem:
Let p and q be integers, and r be a real number.  If p = sqrt(q+r) then r is also an integer.

Proof:
Start with the given:
p = sqrt(q+r)

Square both sides.
p^2 = q+r
This operation is closed under integers, so p^2 is an integer.

Now subtract q from each side.
p^2-q = r
Subtraction is closed under integers so p^2-q is an integer.
But this is equal to r, therefore r is an integer.
QED

Now to the problem statement.  We are given 
m = sqrt(n+sqrt(n+sqrt(n+sqrt(n))))

Apply the theorem with p=m, q=n, and r=sqrt(n+sqrt(n+sqrt(n)))
Then sqrt(n+sqrt(n+sqrt(n))) is an integer.

Apply the theorem again, this time to sqrt(n+sqrt(n+sqrt(n))) and then conclude sqrt(n+sqrt(n)).

And apply the theorem a third time, to sqrt(n+sqrt(n)) and conclude sqrt(n) is an integer.
Then we must have n=k^2 but then we need sqrt(k^2+k) to be an integer.

This is a problem; for any k>=1 the smallest square larger than k^2 is k^2+2k+1 but k^2+k is strictly between k^2 and k^2+2k+1 for any positive k.  Which means sqrt(k^2+k) is irrational for any positive integer k.
Then there are no integer values of k which satisfy the necessary condition sqrt(k^2+k) being rational, which means there are no positive integers n which satisfy the problem statement.

  Posted by Brian Smith on 2025-02-09 16:11:39
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