MATH 366: Assignment 3

Due Friday, January 29, 2010

Logic 1. Do exercise 4 from chapter 2 in the textbook. 2. A famous theorem of Euclidean geometry, the triangle inequality, states The length of each side of a triangle is less than the sum of the lengths of the other two. A statement often called the converse of the triangle inequality states: Given three lengths a, b and c such that a + b > c, b + c > a and c + a > b, there exists a triangle with side lengths a, b and c. Is what sense is this statement the converse of the triangle inequality? Explain. Incidence geometry 3. Do exercises 7, 9, 11 and major exercise 1 from chapter 2 in the textbook. Finite projective planes 4. Do exercise 14 and major exercises 3, 5, 8 from chapter 2 in the textbook. [Remark: It is conjectured that there exists a nite projective plane of order n only if n is a power of a prime, but even the case n = 12 remains an open problem. The proof that there are no nite projective planes of order 10 required a vast computer search.] Compass and straightedge construction 5. Given a segment AB and a positive rational number p/q, describe how to construct (with a compass and straightedge) a segment of length p/q times the length of AB. 6. Assume (though we havent proven it) that it is not possible to construct a regular 7-gon with a compass and straightedge. Is it possible to construct a regular 14-gon? Explain. Is it possible to construct a regular 15-gon?

Extra credit 7. In the ane plane Q2 of points with rational coordinates and the lines they determine, we can give the undened notions of congruence of segments and angles their usual meaning (see page 139 for details on how to do so algebraically). (a) Show that in this geometry, equilateral triangles do not exist (i.e. show that there is no equilateral triangle in the real Euclidean plane whose vertices all have rational coordinates). (b) Show that in this geometry, regular pentagons do not exist. (c) Which regular polygons exist in this geometry? 8. Recall that a eld is a set F together with binary operations1 + and on F satisfying the following axioms: i. a, b, c F, a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c. ii. a, b, c F, a (b c) = (a b) c. iii. a, b F, a + b = b + a. iv. a, b F, a b = b a. v. a, b, c F, a (b + c) = a b + b c. vi. ! 0 F such that a F, a + 0 = 0 + a = a. vii. ! 1 F such that a F, a 1 = 1 a = a. viii. 0 = 1. ix. a F ! -a F such that a + (-a) = (-a) + a = 0. x. a F a = 0 = ! a1 F such that a a1 = a1 a = 1. In exercise 7 from chapter 2, you showed that the three axioms of incidence geometry are independent in the sense that it is impossible to prove any one of them using the other two. In order to show this, for each pair of axioms, you found an interpretation (meaning for point, line, and incidence) in which those two axioms are satised but the third axiom is not. We might like to do the same thing for the nine eld axioms. Some parts are easy; for example, the set {0} with the operations 0 + 0 = 0 and 0 0 = 0 satises every axiom but axiom viii. Other parts, however, seem very dicult. For example, to try to come up with a system satisfying all the axioms but axiom iv (commutativity of multiplication), we might try something like setting F = {2 2 matrices with real entries}, with addition and multiplication being given by matrix addition and matrix multiplication. This example almost works, in that it satises eight of the ten axioms, but axiom x is also not satised. It turns out that actually the above eld axioms do have some redundancy (but for aesthetic reasons we leave them all in). Prove axiom iii (commutativity of addition) using only the other axioms.
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i.e. functions taking ordered pairs of elements of F to elements of F