Scribd
Upload
5 views10 pages

Lecture 7

The document discusses the Cartesian plane as a model for incidence geometry, defining points as ordered pairs of real numbers and lines as subsets satisfying specific equations. It introduces axioms related to points and lines, including the existence of distinct non-collinear points and the distance postulate, while establishing that every line contains infinitely many points. Additionally, it presents lemmas regarding coordinate functions, demonstrating how they can be transformed while preserving their properties.

Uploaded by

petrus Tiger jan10
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
5 views10 pages

Lecture 7

The document discusses the Cartesian plane as a model for incidence geometry, defining points as ordered pairs of real numbers and lines as subsets satisfying specific equations. It introduces axioms related to points and lines, including the existence of distinct non-collinear points and the distance postulate, while establishing that every line contains infinitely many points. Additionally, it presents lemmas regarding coordinate functions, demonstrating how they can be transformed while preserving their properties.

Uploaded by

petrus Tiger jan10
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 10

Let’s check that also the Cartesian plane is a model for incidence

geometry.

Points are oredered pairs of real numbers, that is, the elements of

R2 = R × R = {(x, y ) | x, y ∈ R}

Lines are subsets of R2 satisfying equations of the form


ax + by + c = 0, for a, b, c ∈ R, a and b both nonzero.
(1) We have three non-collinear points, for example, (0, 0), (1, 0)
and (0, 1)
(2) Given any two distinct points, we have a formula to write the
equation of the unique line through them.
(3) Every line contains infinitely many points.
Neutral or absolute geometry: neutral for the parallel postulate, so
absolute. Results are proved without using the parallel postulate,
so they hold both in Euclidean and in non-Euclidean geometries.

Primitive terms are: point, line, lies on, distance (between points),
measure (of angles)

We add new axioms.


Axiom
Every line is a set of points and there is a set of all points called
plane.

The relation lies on is the the usual set-theoretical notion.


We assume all the definitions given in incidence geometry (parallel,
intersection, collinear, ...)
We assume axioms 1 and 2 for incidence geometry. We will have a
stronger form of axiom 3.

Axiom
There exist at least three distict non-collinear points.

Axiom
For ever pair of distict points there exists a unique line containing
both of them.
Axiom (Distance postulate)
For ever pair of points A and B, the distance AB from A to B is a
non negative number.

Axiom (The ruler postulate)


For evey line ` there exists a bijection

f :`→R

such that, for every A, B ∈ `, we have

AB = |f (A) − f (B)|.
Definition
Any function as in the ruler postulate is called a coordinate
function.
So, a coordinate function is a bijective function (injective +
surjective), which is distance preserving (the property
AB = |f (A) − f (B)|).
We soon have the following consequence, which implies Axiom 3
for incidence geometry.
Proposition
Every line contains infinitely many distinct points.

Proof.
By the ruler postulate, every line has a bijection (any coordinate
function for that line) to R, that is, it has the same cardinality as
R, and so it is an infinite set.
We will add more axioms later (when we will introduce angles).
The Cartesian plane is a model (so far) of neutral geometry: we
verified it is a model for incidence geometry; the distance from a
point A to a point B is the usual distance in the Cartesian plane,
and the existence of a coordinate function for every line is left as a
problem.

You may think about why the rational plane Q2 = Q × Q is not a


model for neutral geometry (recall that Q2 was an example of the
pathology leading to non existence of equilateral triangle, where
Euclid’s proof fails): the cardinality of Q (and of Q2 ) is smaller
than that of R, so there is no bijection from lines in Q to R.
Therefore, the ruler postulate impies Axiom 3 for incidence
geometry, in the sense that every line is incident not to just two
points but to infinitely many points. The ruler postulate rules out
all the models for incidence geometry made by finitely many points.
Corollary
Every model of neutral geometry is also a model of incidence
geometry.

Proof.
Axioms 1 and 2 are part of neutral geometry, while Axiom 3 is
implied by the ruler postulate.
Lemma (Ruler sliding lemma)
Let f : ` → R be a coordinate function for a line `, and c ∈ R,
then the function

fc :` → R
fc (x) = f (x) + c

is also a coordinate function for `.


Proof.
Let’s verify that fc is injective: if fc (x) = fc (y ), that is,
f (x) + c = f (y ) + c, then f (x) = f (y ), and so, since f is injective,
we have x = y , that is, fc is injective.
Let y ∈ R: since f is surjective, there is x ∈ ` such that
f (x) = y − c, that is, f (x) + c = y , so fc (x) = y , proving that fc
is surjective.
Finally, fc is distance preserving because

|fc (x) − fc (y )| = |(f (x) + c) − (f (y ) + c)| = |f (x) − f (y )| = xy ,

where the last equality follows from the distance preserving of


f.
So, once we have a coordinate function, then we are able to
construct many others by just adding a constant. We don’t get yet
all of them. The remaining are provided by the next lemma:

Lemma (Ruler flipping lemma)


If f : ` → R be a coordinate function for a line `, then the function

f− :`→R
f − (x) = −f (x)

is also a coordinate function for `.


That is, changing sign to a coordinate function yields another
coordinate function.

You might also like