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Monday, October 3, 2011

Five proofs that the squrate root of 2 is irrational

This weekend I went through a few proofs that the square root of 2 is irrational.

  1. The elementary proof is the one that everyone sees. You assume
    that 2 can be represented as pq where p
    and q share no common factors, that is gcd. By
    multiplying out both sides you're lead to the result that both
    p and q must have 2 as a factor. See
    Wikipedia for the proof.
  2. The second proof is a stronger result, and relies on the
    fundamental theorem of arithmetic to prove that \sqrt{p}
    where p is a prime number must be irrational.
  3. The third proof again relies on the fundamental theorem of
    arithmetic and states that \sqrt[k]{n}, the k-th root of a
    number n that is not a perfect k-th power is irrational.
  4. The fourth proof is one that I hadn't seen before. It is
    elementary and of course Wikipedia has it. I like the one I found
    in Galois Theory by Ian Stewart:
    1. Assume that there exist integers a, b with b \neq 0 such
      that (a/b)^2=2.
    2. Show that we may assume a,b > 0.
    3. Observe that if such an expression exists, then there must be
      one in which b is as small as possible.
    4. Show that (\frac{2b-a}{a-b})^2 = 2.
    5. Show that 2b-a>0,a-b>0.
    6. Show that a-b<b, a contradiction.
  5. The fifth proof uses the rational root theorem on the
    polynomial x^2-2=0.