The p-adic Numbers


Tuesday, February 1, 2005
2:00p.m., Room 304

Clay Petche
University of Georgia

Abstract: This will be a gentle introduction to the field of p-adic numbers. Although this number theoretic object shares many properties in common with the field of real numbers, the p-adic field can be rather bizarre in some respects as well. For example, in this field the closed unit ball forms a ring, every triangle is isosceles, and in
any open ball, every point is the center! We'll discuss these oddities and more.