Tuesday, June 7, 2016

number theory - Proof verification for irrationality of sqrtn, when n is not the square of a positive integer.

I think I have a valid proof for the irrationality of n, when n is not the square of a positive integer. My teacher taught us a different method to prove 2 is irrational, which is perfectly valid, but my method just seems a little neater to me and it works in general for any value of n that isn't a perfect square .



Firstly, lets assume n, when n is not the square of a positive integer, is rational.
Hence:



n = ab, where a,bN b0




Therefore, by squaring both sides we find:



n = a2b2



Hence, we see a2 = nb2 (1)



Let a have a prime factorisation of a=ni=1piei, where pi is a prime, and ei is the multiplicity of the prime power pi. Hence, a2 will have a prime factorisation of a2=ni=1pi2ei.



Also, we can state b in the form of b=ni=1qifi, hence b2 can be expressed as b2=ni=1qi2fi, where qi is a prime, and fi is its corresponding multiplicity.




Now consider equation (1). We know that n is not a perfect square of a positive integer, so the multiplicities in its prime factorisation must not all be even, as a number is a perfect square if, and only if, (iff), the multiplicities of its prime factors are all even. Hence, it is impossible for equation (1) to hold, as the multiplicities on the LHS must all be even, and on the RHS, it is impossible for this to be the case, as the multiplicities in b2 are all even, but in n they are not. Hence, the product of these two can never have even multiplicities for all prime factors, hence equality can never hold.



Hence, this results in a contradiction, so our initial assumption that n, when n is not the square of a positive integer, being rational was false, hence n must be irrational, for n not being a perfect square.

No comments:

Post a Comment

analysis - Injection, making bijection

I have injection f:AB and I want to get bijection. Can I just resting codomain to f(A)? I know that every function i...