Robert Goudie, age 17 from Madras College, Fife, Scotland and
Andrei Lazanu, age 14 from School No. 205, Bucharest, Romania sent
in correct solutions here.
US Postal Service Money
Order
The sum of the first 10 digits of 123-123-123-45 is 22, and,
divided by 9, I obtain the remainder 4, not 5. That is $$a_1 + a_2
+ ... + a_{10} \equiv 4 \hbox{ mod 9}$$ so, this is not a correct
US Money Order number.
Airline Tickets
The first 8 digits of the number are 12345678. This means
$$12345678 \equiv 2 \hbox{ mod 7}$$
and does not satisfy the condition to be congruent to 0 mod 7. This
is not a correct airline ticket number.
Universal Product Code
In this case, I wrote the 12 numbers 654321123456, and verified if
they match the condition.
US Banks
The number 07100013 is not a valid US Bank number because it does
not have 9 digits. If it had the digit 6 at the end then it would
be valid because
a) A four digit number (in base 10) aabb is a perfect square. Discuss ways of systematically finding this number.
(b) Prove that 11^{10}-1 is divisible by 100.