(Question 3 (a) from the CSSA trial)
question was something like find values of x if x is real and (x + i)^4 is imaginary.
here's what I did:
= x^4 + 4x^3i + 6x^2i^2 + 4xi^3 + i^4
= x^4 - 6x^2 + 1 + i(4x^3 - 4x) -> imaginary, real part = 0
ie x^4 - 6x^2 + 1 = 0
using the quadtratic...
Oh and btw, if anyone's interested what the famous piece of literature that evaluates to pi is, it's Cadaeic Cadenza (http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/cadenza.htm), which, funnily enough, I had just read a few days before :).
underthesun, well, that's what I put, and I got it :D
Yes, I got full marks in both potential energy q's :). Are you talking about the written one or the calculation specifically?
Interesting. I noticed your scores average around ~10 per task -- is this due to intentionally stopping work on the task after a period of time and proceding to the next, or were they just so rushed that they seemed complete at the time?
In hindsight we spent way too long on the first couple of...
tasks are at http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~progcomp/questions.html if you want to take a look.
i'd like to know how all these top teams managed to get 5 tasks done in only 2 hours... we struggled to finish 3!