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Some Prime Squares Sum Cube (Posted on 2023-05-21) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Find all triplet(s) (p, q, r) of prime numbers, that satisfy this equation:
          p3 = p2 + q2 + r2
Justify your answer with valid reasoning.

See The Solution Submitted by K Sengupta    
Rating: 4.5000 (2 votes)

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Solution Full Solution Comment 4 of 4 |
Lets work mod 3 and split this into cases.

Case 1: none of p,q,r are congruent to 0 mod 3.  Then the equation mod 3 reduces to +/-1 = 0. This is a contradiction, so no solutions here.

Case 2: all of p,q,r are congruent to 0 mod 3.  Then needing all variables to be prime means the equation can only be 3^3 = 3^2 + 3^2 + 3^2.  This checks out.  

Case 3: two of p,q,r are congruent to 0 mod 3
Subcase 1: p=0 mod 3.  Then without loss of generality let q=3; then 27 = 9 + 9 + r^2 but then r=3 which is the Case 2 solution
Subcase 2: q and r are 0 mod 3.  Then p^3 = p^2 + 9 + 9.  Then we have p^3 - p^2 - 18 = 0, but the one integer root is p=3, which again is already covered in Case 2.

Case 4: exactly one of p,q,r are congruent to 0 mod 3
Subcase 1: p=0 mod 3.  Then 27 = 9 + q^2 + r^2, which then means 18 = q^2 + r^2.  This is very easy to check that the only positive integer solution is again q=r=3
Subcase 2: without loss of generality q=3.  Then p^3 = p^2 + r^2 + 9.  Now we'll go mod 6.  Then the equation reduces to +/1 = 4 +/- 1.  This is a contradiction, so no solutions in this case.

That leaves us with exactly one triplet (p,q,r) of prime numbers that satisfy the given equation is (3,3,3).

  Posted by Brian Smith on 2023-05-22 10:27:36
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