You want to make a bracelet and have two materials: gold and silver. The bracelet needs to be eight inches long. You want to use the least amount of material possible and can only make the bracelet out of gold or silver. What would you need to know about each atom, and how would this information help you make a decision? Explain.

I'm going to call the length of the bracelet the number of times you have to add to get back to the first bead. This is the same as the number of beads, except in one case:

The shortest bracelet has length 1 and starts with (0,0). If you add one time, you get back to the first 0. But the bracelet has two beads. (Every bracelet has to have at least two beads to start.) The next shortest bracelet starts with (0,5), and has length 3: 0 5 5.

There is a bracelet of length 4 that starts with (2,6) (the first example on the main page):

2 6 8 4

There is a bracelet of length 12 that starts with (1,3) (the second example on the main page):

1 3 4 7 1 8 9 7 6 3 9 2

There is a bracelet of length 20 that starts with (0,4)

0 4 4 8 2 0 2 2 4 6 0 6 6 2 8 0 8 8 6 4

There is a bracelet of length 60 that starts with (0,1)