Kirsten Dent

Polya Problem #1: 100 Lockers

Suppose you are in a hallway with 100 closed lockers. You begin opening every locker.
Then you close every second locker. Then you go to every third locker and open it (if it's
closed) or close it (if it's open). Let's call this action toggling a locker. Continue toggling
every nth locker on pass number n. After 100 passes, where you toggle only locker #100,
how many lockers are open?

Step 1: Understand the Problem

There are 100 closed lockers in a hallway. At first you open every locker. Then you go through
and close every other/every second locker. Then you open/close every third locker (if the locker
was closed you need to open it and if it was open then you need to close it). Then you open/close
every fourth locker, every fifth locker, every sixth locker, and you will continue with this process
until you have opened/closed every hundredth locker. Once you have opened or closed all of
those lockers then you need to find how many lockers are still open.
Step 2: Devise a Plan
The two problem strategies I am going to use are create a table and find a pattern. I believe that
using a table will help me keep my information organized so that it is easy to spot a pattern.
Since creating a table from 1 to 100 would take too long, I am going to create a table with the
locker numbers from 1 to 20 and I will see if I can find the pattern from there. My table will
include the locker number, the factors that go into the locker number, and the pattern that shows
whether the locker will be open or closed. The pattern that shows whether the locker will be open
or closed is based off of the number of factors the locker number has. It is important to look at
the factors because that tells you what nth locker toggle the locker will open or close on. For
example, if we look at the number 23, the factors of 23 are 1 and 23. This means the locker will
open on the very first toggle and then it will close on the 23rd toggle. Using this approach, will
help me find a pattern which will then help me figure out which lockers are open after the 100th
toggle. Once I have found the pattern, I will mark all lockers that stay open after the 100th toggle
with the color green on my grid of numbers from 1 to 100.
Step 3: Carry Out the Plan
First, we will make a table that will organize the locker numbers, the factors of the locker
numbers, and the pattern of the factors showing whether the locker is open or closed. By doing
this, it will help us find a pattern that we can use to solve the problem for 100 lockers. The letter
O will stand for open locker and the letter C will stand for close locker. (All of the locker
numbers highlighted in green are the ones that are open after 100 toggles)

(See next page for table and grid)

 Open Open Open or
Open or
# Factor or # Factor or # Factor Closed # Factor
Closed
Closed Closed
1 1 O 6 1236 OCOC 11 1 11 OC 16 1 2 4 8 16 OCOCO
12346 OCOCO
2 12 OC 7 17 OC 12 17 1 17 OC
12 C
3 13 OC 8 18 OC 13 1 13 OC 18 1 2 3 6 9 18 OCOCOC
4 124 OCO 9 139 OCO 14 1 2 7 14 OCOC 19 1 19 OC
5 15 OC 10 1 2 5 10 OCOC 15 1 3 5 15 OCOC 20 1 2 4 5 10 20 OCOCOC

If you look at this table, you can see a pattern. The only open lockers are 1, 4, 9, and 16. All of
these numbers are perfect squares. So, the answer would be all numbers that are perfect squares
between 1 and 100. This would make sense because perfect squares have an odd number of
factors, because two of their factors are the exact same number which means you only need to
represent that number once. If a number has an odd number of factors then the locker will stay
open.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
The number of lockers left open after 100 passes/toggles would be 10. The locker numbers
would be 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100.
Step 4: Look Back
The create a table and find a pattern strategy worked better than I thought it would. I was able to
find the answer to the question pretty quickly using the table. It made it even better that I didn’t
have to make a table from 1 to 100 before finding the pattern. Once I started filling out the table,
the pattern was very clear and straightforward. I feel like using a table to organize my thinking
was the best strategy to use on this problem. I think that most people would use a table but
maybe they would organize it in different ways than how I organized my table. I don’t believe
that any other strategies would have worked as well as creating a table and finding a pattern.
Looking back, I think I would tackle this problem in the exact same way I did for this problem.