Further investigation of the Mordell Equation

If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site: intermathematics.com for over 2000+ pdf pages of resources for teaching IB maths!

Further investigation of the Mordell Equation

This post carries on from the previous post on the Mordell Equation – so make sure you read that one first – otherwise this may not make much sense.  The man pictured above (cite: Wikipedia) is Louis Mordell who studied the equations we are looking at today (and which now bear his name).

In the previous post I looked at solutions to the difference between a cube and a square giving an answer of 2.  This time I’ll try to generalise to the difference between a cube and a square giving an answer of k.  I’ll start with the same method as from the previous post:

In the last 2 lines we outline the 2 possibilities, either b = 1 or b = -1.  First let’s see what happens when b = 1:

This will only provide an integer solution for a if we have:

Which generates the following first few values for k when we run through m = 1, 2,3..:

k = 2, 11, 26, 47

We follow the same method for b = -1 and get the following:

Which generates the following first few values for k when we run through m = 1, 2,3…:

k = 4, 13, 28, 49

These are the values of k which we will be able to generate solutions to. Following the same method as in the previous post this generates the following solutions:

Let’s illustrate one of these results graphically.  If we take the solutions for k = 13, which are (17,70) and (17,-70), these points should be on the curve x cubed – y squared = 13.

This is indeed the case.  This graph also demonstrates how all solutions to these curves will have symmetrical solutions (e, f) and (e, -f).

We can run a quick computer program to show that this method does not find all the solutions for the given values of k, but it does ensure solutions will be found for the k values in these lists.

In the code solutions above, results are listed k, x, y, x cubed, y squared.  We can see for example that in the case of k = 11 our method did not find the solution x = 3 and y = 4 (though we found x = 15 and y = 58).  So, using this method we now have a way of finding some solutions for some values of k – we’ve not cracked the general case, but we have at least made a start!

Essential resources for IB students:

1) Revision Village

Revision Village has been put together to help IB students with topic revision both for during the course and for the end of Year 12 school exams and Year 13 final exams.  I would strongly recommend students use this as a resource during the course (not just for final revision in Y13!) There are specific resources for HL and SL students for both Analysis and Applications.

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The Practice Exams section takes you to a large number of ready made quizzes, exams and predicted papers.   These all have worked solutions and allow you to focus on specific topics or start general revision.  This also has some excellent challenging questions for those students aiming for 6s and 7s.

Essential Resources for IB Teachers

1) Intermathematics.com

If you are a teacher then please also visit my new site.  This has been designed specifically for teachers of mathematics at international schools.  The content now includes over 2000 pages of pdf content for the entire SL and HL Analysis syllabus and also the SL Applications syllabus.  Some of the content includes:

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Essential Resources for both IB teachers and IB students

1) Exploration Guides and Paper 3 Resources

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