Question

Mady has an infinite number of balls and empty boxes available to her. The empty boxes, each capable of holding four balls, are arranged in a row from left to right. At the first step, she places a ball in the first box of the row. At each subsequent step, she places a ball in the first box of the row that still has room for a ball and empties any previous boxes. How many balls in total are in the boxes as a result of Mady's 2010th step

Answer 1

Answer:

The number of balls in the box at 2010th step is 6 balls

Explanation:

Since the boxes are arranged from left to right, and since the empty boxes are capable of holding 4 balls at once.

Therefore, her steps would follow this pattern ;

00001 - 1st Step

0002 - 2nd Step

0003 - 3rd Step

0004 -4th Step

0010 - 5th Step

0011 - 6th Step

0021 - 7th step

0031 - 8th step

0041 - 9th step

Looking at this pattern, it is obvious this digits are in base 5 because once we count to 4 in a unit, we move to the next at 1.

Thus,at Mady's 2010th step, we'll convert to base 5,thus 2010 in base 5 is calculated as;

2010 ÷ 5 = 402 r 0, so Base 5 is now: _ _ _ _ 0.

402 ÷ 5 = 80 r 2, so Base 5 is now: _ _ _ 2 0.

80 ÷ 5 = 16 r 0, so Base 5 is now:

_ _ 0 2 0.

16 ÷ 5 = 3 r 1, so Base 5 is now: _ 1 0 2 0.

3 ÷ 5 = 0 r 3, so Base 5 is now: 3 1 0 2 0.

So 2010 in base 10 is 31020 in base 5. Thus,the number of balls in the box at 2010th step is equal to 3 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 6balls