Tangling Up the Number Line With P-adics by Jonathan Geller ’24

Tangling Up the Number Line With P-adics by Jonathan Geller ’24, Wednesday September 27, 1:00 – 1:50, North Science Building 113, Wachenheim

Abstract: If you begin with the rational numbers and define the absolute value on them in the conventional way, you can use that absolute value to fill in some gaps in the rationals to get the real numbers. With a different choice of absolute value, we can instead generate a whole new superset of the rationals called the p-adics. We’ll explore some examples of how these numbers behave, show how they can be employed to solve a wide variety of problems, and think about other possible ways of defining an absolute value on the rationals.