Square root of 2

The square root of 2, often known as root 2 or radical 2 and written as , is the positive algebraic number that, when multiplied by itself, gives the number 2. It is more precisely called the principal square root of 2, to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property. Geometrically the square root of 2 is the length of a diagonal across a square with sides of one unit of length; this follows from the Pythagorean theorem. It was probably the first number known to be irrational. Its numerical value truncated to 65 decimal places is: 1.41421356237309504880168872420969807856967187537694 807317667973799... (sequence A002193 in OEIS).

The square root of 2. The quick approximation 99/70 ( 1.41429) for the square root of two is frequently used. Despite having a denominator of only 70, it differs from the correct value by less than 1/10,000 (approx. 7.2 10 -5).

The square root of 2 is equal to the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of length 1.

History
The Babylonian clay approximation of six decimal figures:[1] tablet YBC 7289 (c. 18001600 BC) in four sexagesimal figures, which gives an is about

Another early close approximation is given in ancient Indian mathematical texts, the Sulbasutras (c. 800200 BC) as follows: Increase the length [of the side] by its third and this third by its own fourth less the thirty-fourth part of that fourth.[2] That is,

This ancient Indian approximation is the seventh in a sequence of increasingly accurate approximations based on the sequence of Pell numbers, that can be derived from the continued fraction expansion of . Despite having a smaller denominator, it is only slightly less accurate than the Babylonian approximation. Pythagoreans discovered that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, or in modern language, that the square root of two is irrational. Little is known with certainty about the time or circumstances of this discovery, but the name of Hippasus of Metapontum is often mentioned. For a while, the Pythagoreans treated as an official secret the discovery that the square root of two is irrational, and, according to legend, Hippasus was murdered for divulging it.[3][4][5] The square root of two is occasionally called "Pythagoras' number" or "Pythagoras' Constant", for example Conway & Guy (1996).

Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 with annotations.

Computation algorithms
There are a number of algorithms for approximating , which in expressions as a ratio of integers or as a decimal can only be approximated. The most common algorithm for this, one used as a basis in many computers and calculators, is the Babylonian method[7] of computing square roots, which is one of many methods of computing square roots. It goes as follows: First, pick a guess, ; the value of the guess affects only how many iterations are required to reach an approximation of a certain accuracy. Then, using that guess, iterate through the following recursive computation:

The more iterations through the algorithm (that is, the more computations performed and the greater "n"), the better approximation of the square root of 2 is achieved. Each iteration approximately doubles the number of correct digits. Starting with a0 = 1 the next approximations are

3/2 = 1.5 17/12 = 1.416... 577/408 = 1.414215... 665857/470832 = 1.4142135623746....

The value of was calculated to 137,438,953,444 decimal places by Yasumasa Kanada's team in 1997. In February 2006 the record for the calculation of was eclipsed with the use of a home computer. Shigeru Kondo calculated 200,000,000,000 decimal places in slightly over 13 days and 14 hours using a 3.6 GHz PC with 16 GiB of memory.Among mathematical constants with computationally challenging decimal

expansions, only has been calculated more precisely.Such computations aim to empirically check whether such numbers are normal.

Proofs of irrationality
A short proof of the irrationality of can be obtained from the rational root theorem, that is, if is a monic polynomial with integer coefficients, then any rational root of is necessarily an integer. Applying this to the polynomial , it follows that is either an integer or irrational. Because is not an integer (2 is not a perfect square), must therefore be irrational. This proof can be generalized to show that any root of any natural number which is not the square of a natural number is irrational. See quadratic irrational or infinite descent#Irrationality of k if it is not an integer for a proof that the square root of any non-square natural number is irrational.

Proof by infinite descent

One proof of the number's irrationality is the following proof by infinite descent. It is also a proof by contradiction, also known as an indirect proof, in that the proposition is proved by assuming that the opposite of the proposition is true and showing that this assumption is false, thereby implying that the proposition must be true. 1. Assume that is a rational number, meaning that there exists an integer and an integer in general such that . 2. Then can be written as an irreducible fraction such that and are coprime integers. 3. It follows that and . ( ) 4. Therefore is even because it is equal to . ( is necessarily even because it is 2 times another whole number and even numbers are multiples of 2.) 5. It follows that a must be even (as squares of odd integers are never even). 6. Because a is even, there exists an integer k that fulfills: . 7. Substituting from step 6 for a in the second equation of step 3: is equivalent to , which is equivalent to .

8. Because is divisible by two and therefore even, and because , it follows that is also even which means that b is even. 9. By steps 5 and 8 a and b are both even, which contradicts that is irreducible as stated in step 2. Q.E.D. Because there is a contradiction, the assumption (1) that is a rational number must be false. By the law of excluded middle, the opposite is proven: is irrational. This proof was hinted at by Aristotle, in his Analytica Priora, I.23.[10] It appeared first as a full proof in Euclid's Elements, as proposition 117 of Book X. However, since the early 19th century historians agree that this proof is an interpolation and not attributable to Euclid. Proof by unique factorization An alternative proof uses the same approach with the fundamental theorem of arithmetic which says every integer greater than 1 has a unique factorization into powers of primes. 1. Assume that is a rational number. Then there are integers a and b such that a is coprime to b and . In other words, can be written as an irreducible fraction. 2. The value of b cannot be 1 as there is no integer a the square of which is 2. 3. There must be a prime p which divides b and which does not divide a, otherwise the fraction would not be irreducible. 4. The square of a can be factored as the product of the primes into which a is factored but with each power doubled. 5. Therefore by unique factorization the prime p which divides b, and also its square, cannot divide the square of a. 6. Therefore the square of an irreducible fraction cannot be reduced to an integer. 7. Therefore the square root of 2 cannot be a rational number. This proof can be generalized to show that if an integer is not an exact kth power of another integer then its kth root is irrational. The article quadratic irrational gives a proof of the same result but not using the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.

Proof by infinite descent, not involving factoring

The following reductio ad absurdum argument showing the irrationality of less well-known. It uses the additional information that .[12] is so

1. Assume that is a rational number. This would mean that there exist positive integers m and n with such that . Then and . 2. We may assume that n is the smallest integer so that is an integer. That is, that the fraction m/n is in lowest terms. 3. Then 4. Because , it follows that . 5. So the fraction m/n for , which according to (2) is already in lowest terms, is represented by (3) in strictly lower terms. This is a contradiction, so the assumption that is rational must be false.

Geometric proof
Another reductio ad absurdum showing that is irrational is less well[13] known. It is also an example of proof by infinite descent. It makes use of classic compass and straightedge construction, proving the theorem by a method similar to that employed by ancient Greek geometers. It is essentially the previous proof viewed geometrically. Let ABC be a right isosceles triangle with hypotenuse length m and legs n. By the Pythagorean theorem, . Suppose m and n areintegers. Let m:n be a ratio given in its lowest terms. Draw the arcs BD and CE with centre A. Join DE. It follows that AB = AD, AC = AE and the BAC and DAE coincide. Therefore the triangles ABCand ADE are congruent by SAS. Because EBF is a right angle and BEF is half a right angle, BEF is also a right isosceles triangle. Hence BE = m n implies BF = m n. By symmetry, DF = m n, and FDC is also a right isosceles triangle. It also follows that FC = n (m n) = 2n m.

Hence we have an even smaller right isosceles triangle, with hypotenuse length 2n m and legs m n. These values are integers even smaller than mand n and in the same ratio, contradicting the hypothesis that m:n is in lowest terms. Therefore m and n cannot be both integers, hence is irrational.

Analytic proof

Lemma: let for all

and and

such that

Then is irrational. Proof: suppose = a/b with a, b N+. For sufficiently big n,

then

but

is an integer, absurd, then is irrational. is irrational. and

Proof: let

for all

By induction,

for all

. For

and if is true for n then is true for

. In fact

By application of the lemma, irrational.

is

Constructive proof
In a constructive approach, one distinguishes between on the one hand not being rational, and on the other hand being irrational (i.e., being quantifiably apart from every rational), the latter being a stronger property. Given integers a and b, because the valuation (i.e., highest power of 2 dividing a number) of 2b2 is odd, while the valuation of a2 is even, they must be distinct integers, so that, applying the law of trichotomy in the context of an effectively computable predicate over , we obtain . Then[14]

the latter inequality being true because we assume (otherwise the quantitative apartness can be trivially established). This gives a lower bound of for the difference , yielding a direct proof of irrationality not relying on the law of excluded middle; see Errett Bishop (1985, p. 18). This proof constructively exhibits a discrepancy between and any rational.

Properties of the square root of two

One-half of , also 1 divided by the square root of 2, approximately 0.70710 67811 86548, is a common quantity in geometry and trigonometry because the unit vector that makes a 45 angle with the axes in a plane has the coordinates

This number satisfies

One interesting property of the square root of 2 is as follows:

since of silver ratios.

This is related to the property

The square root of 2 can also be expressed in terms of the copies of the imaginary unit i using only the square root and arithmetic operations:

The square root of 2 is also the only real number other than 1 whose infinite tetrate is equal to its square.

The square root of 2 appears in Vite's formula for :

for m square roots and only one minus sign. Similar in appearance but with a finite number of terms, the square root of 2 appears in various trigonometric constants:

It is not known whether is a normal number, a stronger property than irrationality, but statistical analyses of its binary expansion are consistent with the hypothesis that it is normal to base two.

Series and product representations

The identity , along with the infinite product representations for the sine and cosine, leads to products such as

and

or equivalently,

The number can also be expressed by taking the Taylor series of a trigonometric function. For example, the series for gives

The Taylor series of factorial gives

with

and using the double

The convergence of this series can be accelerated with an Euler transform, producing

It is not known whether can be represented with a BBP-type formula. BBP-type formulas are known for and however.

Continued fraction representation

The square root of two has the following continued fraction representation:

The convergents formed by truncating this representation form a sequence of fractions that approximate the square root of two to increasing accuracy, and that are described by the Pell numbers(known as side and diameter numbers to the ancient Greeks because of their use in approximating the ratio between the sides and diagonal of a square). The first convergents are: 1/1, 3/2, 7/5, 17/12, 41/29, 99/70, 239/169, 577/408. The convergent p/q differs from the square root of 2 by almost exactly and then the next convergent is (p + 2q)/(p + q).

Square root of 3
The square root of 3 is the positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, gives the number 3. It is more precisely called theprincipal square root of 3, to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property. It is denoted by The first sixty significant digits of its decimal expansion are:

1.73205080756887729352744634150587236694280525381038062 805580... (sequence A002194 in OEIS) The rounded value of 1.732 is correct to within 0.01% of the actual value. A close fraction is (1.732142857...). Archimedes reported (1351/780)2 > 3 > (265/153)2, accurate 1/608400 (6-places) and 2/23409 (4-places), respectively. to

The square root of 3 is an irrational number. It is also known as Theodorus' constant, named after Theodorus of Cyrene. It can be expressed as the continued fraction [1;1,2,1,2,1,2,1,...] (sequence A040001 in OEIS), expanded on the right. It can also be expressed by generalized continued fractions such as

which is [1;1, 2,1, 2,1, 2,1, ...] evaluated at every second term.

List of numbers Irrational and suspected irrational numbers (3) 2 3 5 S e

Binary Decimal Hexadecimal

1.1011101101100111101...

1.7320508075688772935... 1.BB67AE8584CAA73B...

Continued fraction

Proof of irrationality
This irrationality proof for the square root of 3 uses Fermat's method of infinite descent: Suppose that 3 is rational, and express it in lowest possible terms (i.e., as a fully reduced fraction) as for natural numbers m and n. Then 3 can be

expressed in lower terms as , which is a contradiction. [1] (The two fractional expressions are equal because equating them, cross-multiplying, and canceling like additive terms gives and hence , which is true by the premise. The second fractional expression for 3 is in lower terms since, comparing denominators, since since since . And both the numerator and the denominator of the second fractional expression are positive since and .)

Geometry and trigonometry

If an equilateral triangle with sides of length 1 is cut into two equal halves, by bisecting an internal angle across to make a right angle with one side, the right angle triangle's hypotenuse is length one and the sides are of length 1/2 and 3/2. From this the trigonometric function tangent of 60 degrees equals 3, and the sine of 60 and the cosine of 30 both equal half of 3. The square root of 3 also appears in algebraic expressions for various other trigonometric constants, including[2] the sines of 3, 12, 15, 21, 24, 33, 39, 48, 51, 57, 66, 69, 75, 78, 84, and 87. It is the distance between parallel sides of a regular hexagon with sides of length 1. On the complex plane, this distance is expressed as i 3 mentionedbelow. It is the length of the space diagonal of a unit cube. The shape Vesica piscis has a major axis: minor axis ratio equal to the square root of three, this can be shown by constructing two equilateral triangles within it.

The square root of 3 is equal to the length between parallel sides of a regular hexagon with sides of length 1

Square root of 3
Multiplication of 3 to imaginary unit gives a square root of 3, an imaginary number. More exactly, (see square root of negative numbers). It is an Eisenstein integer. Namely, it is expressed as the difference between two non-real cubic roots of 1 (which are Eisenstein integers).

Square root of 5
The square root of 5 is the positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, gives the prime number 5. It is more precisely called the principal square root of 5, to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property. This number appears in the fractional expression for the golden ratio. It can be denoted in surd form as: It is an irrational algebraic number.[1] The first sixty significant digits of its decimal expansion are: 2.23606 79774 99789 69640 91736 68731 27623 54406 18359 61152 57242 7089... (sequence A002163 in OEIS). which can be rounded down to 2.236 to within 99.99% accuracy. As of April 1994, its numerical value in decimal had been computed to at least one million digits.[

List of numbers Irrational and suspected irrational numbers (3) 2 3 5 S e

Binary Decimal Hexadecimal

10.0011110001101111... 2.23606797749978969... 2.3C6EF372FE94F82C...

Continued fraction

Proof of irrationality
This irrationality proof for the square root of 5 uses Fermat's method of infinite descent: Suppose that 5 is rational, and express it in lowest possible terms (i.e., as a fully reduced fraction) as for natural numbers m and n. Then 5 can be

expressed in lower terms as , which is a contradiction.[3] (The two fractional expressions are equal because equating them, cross-multiplying, and canceling like additive terms gives and hence , which is true by the premise. The second fractional expression for 5 is in lower terms since, comparing denominators, since since since . And both the numerator and the denominator of the second fractional expression are positive since and .)

Continued fraction
It can be expressed as the continued fraction [2; 4, 4, 4, 4, 4...] (sequence A040002 in OEIS). The sequence of best rational approximations is:

Convergents of the continued fraction are colored; their numerators are 2, 9, 38, 161, ... (sequence A001077 in OEIS), and their denominators are 1, 4, 17, 72, ... (sequence A001076 in OEIS). The other (non-colored) terms are semiconvergents.

Babylonian method
When is computed with the Babylonian method, starting with r0 = 2 and using rn+1 = (rn + 5/rn) / 2, the nth approximant rn is equal to the 2n-th convergent of the convergent sequence:

Relation to the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers

This golden ratio is the arithmetic mean of 1 and the square root of 5.[4] The algebraic relationship between the square root of 5, the golden ratio and the conjugate of the golden ratio ( ) are expressed in the following formulae:

(See section below for their geometrical interpretation as decompositions of a root-5 rectangle.) The square root of 5 then naturally figures in the closed form expression for the Fibonacci numbers, a formula which is usually written in terms of the golden ratio:

The quotient of 5 and (or the product of 5 and ), and its reciprocal, provide an interesting pattern of continued fractions and are related to the ratios between the Fibonacci numbers and the Lucas numbers:

The series of convergents to these values feature the series of Fibonacci numbers and the series of Lucas numbers as numerators and denominators, and viceversa, respectively:

The 52 diagonal of a half square forms the basis for the geometrical construction of a golden rectangle.

Geometry
Geometrically, the square root of 5 corresponds to the diagonal of a rectangle whose sides are of length 1 and 2, as is evident from thePythagorean theorem. Such a rectangle can be obtained by halving a square, or by placing two equal squares side by side. Together with the

algebraic relationship between 5 and , this forms the basis for the geometrical construction of a golden rectangle from a square, and for the construction of a regular pentagon given its side (since the side-to-diagonal ratio in a regular pentagon is ). Forming a dihedral right angle with the two equal squares that halve a 1:2 rectangle, it can be seen that 5 corresponds also to the ratio between the length of a cube edge and the shortest distance from one of its vertices to the opposite one, when traversing the cube surface (the shortest distance when traversing through the inside of the cube corresponds to the length of the cube diagonal, which is the square root of three times the edge). The number 5 can be algebraically and geometrically related to the square root of 2 and the square root of 3, as it is the length of the hypotenuseof a right triangle with catheti measuring 2 and 3 (again, the Pythagorean theorem proves this). Right triangles of such proportions can be found inside a cube: the sides of any triangle defined by the centre point of a cube, one of its vertices, and the middle point of a side located on one the faces containing that vertex and opposite to it, are in the ratio 2:3:5. This follows from the geometrical relationships between a cube and the quantities 2 (edge-to-face-diagonal ratio, or distance between opposite edges), 3 (edge-to-cube-diagonal ratio) and 5 (the relationship just mentioned above). A rectangle with side proportions 1:5 is called a root-five rectangle and is part of the series of root rectangles, a subset of dynamic rectangles, which are based on 1 (= 1), 2, 3, 4 (= 2), 5... and successively constructed using the diagonal of the previous root rectangle, starting from a square. A root-5 rectangle is particularly notable in that it can be split into a square and two equal golden rectangles (of dimensions 1), or into two golden rectangles of different sizes (of dimensions 1 and 1 ). It can also be decomposed as the union of two equal golden rectangles (of dimensions 1 ) whose intersection forms a square. All this is can be seen as the geometric interpretation of the algebraic relationships between 5, and mentioned above. The root-5 rectangle can be constructed from a 1:2 rectangle (the root-4 rectangle), or directly from a square in a manner similar to the one for the golden rectangle shown in the illustration, but extending the arc of length 52 to both sides.

Conway triangle decomposition into homothetic smaller triangles.

Trigonometry
Like 2 and 3, the square root of 5 appears extensively in the formulae for exact trigonometric constants, including in the sines and cosines of every angle whose measure in degrees is divisible by 3 but not by 15.[8] The simplest of these are

As such the computation of its value is important for generating trigonometric tables. Since 5 is geometrically linked to half-square rectangles and to pentagons, it also appears frequently in formulae for the geometric properties of figures derived from them, such as in the formula for the volume of a dodecahedron.

Diophantine approximations
Hurwitz's theorem in Diophantine approximations states that every irrational number x can be approximated by infinitely many rational numbers m/n in lowest terms in such a way that

and that 5 is best possible, in the sense that for any larger constant than 5, there are some irrational numbers x for which only finitely many such approximations exist. Closely related to this is the theorem that of any three consecutive convergents pi/qi, pi+1/qi+1, pi+2/qi+2, of a number , at least one of the three inequalities holds:

And the 5 in the denominator is the best bound possible since the convergents of the golden ratio make the difference on the left-hand side arbitrarily close to the value on the right-hand side. In particular, one cannot obtain a tighter bound by considering sequences of four or more consecutive convergents.

Algebra
The ring contains numbers of the form , where a and b are integers and is the imaginary number . This ring is a frequently cited example of an integral domain that is not a unique factorization domain. The number 6 has two inequivalent factorizations within this ring: The field , like any other quadratic field, is an abelian extension of the rational numbers. The KroneckerWeber theorem therefore guarantees that the square root of five can be written as a rational linear combination of roots of unity:

Identities of Ramanujan
The square root of 5 appears in various identities of Ramanujan involving continued fractions. For example, this case of the RogersRamanujan continued fraction: