How Many Doors Remain Open After Toggling States in the 1000-Door Puzzle?

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The discussion revolves around a puzzle involving 1000 doors in a hallway, all initially open. The process involves closing all doors, then opening every other door, and subsequently toggling the state of every nth door at each step up to 1000. Participants confirm the numerical solution to the puzzle, which leads to a discussion about deriving the result without computational assistance. The conversation also touches on the scalability of the problem, with one participant humorously suggesting the scenario of having 10^100000 doors. Overall, the focus is on solving the puzzle and exploring its implications.
maze
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Hey i posted this puzzle a few days ago in another forum, but the stickied thread is completely dead and I don't think anyone even reads it anymore, so I'm going to post it here. Plus I think this is the more proper forum as it is more of a puzzle than a math problem (though it is both).

PUZZLE:
In a very long hallway, there are 1000 doors all initially open.
First, you close every door.
Second, you open every other door.
Next, you toggle the state of every 3rd door (open it if it is closed and close it if it is open),
Next, you toggle every 4th door,
and you continue this process, at the toggling the state of every nth door at the n'th step.

At the end of this process (when n=1000), how many doors are open?

Here is a diagram:
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/1967/door2rc2.gif
 
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I think I found the result numerically...

969 are open

is that right? Now let's see if I can derive it without computer :smile:

[edit]Cool, I didn't know spoiler tags worked here![/edit]
 
Yep numerically that's right. Now what if there are 10^100000 doors? ;)
 
maze said:
Yep numerically that's right. Now what if there are 10^100000 doors? ;)

For N doors, the number of open doors is: N-FLOOR(SQRT(N))

DaveE
 
correct indeed! nice one
 

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