TheoremBase

The Rational Numbers are Dense in the Real Numbers

Statement

Let R\mathbb{R} be the real numbers with the order ≤\le of its ordered field structure, let Q\mathbb{Q} be the set of rational numbers, and let ∣s∣|s| denote the absolute value of s∈Rs\in\mathbb{R}. For s,t∈Rs,t\in\mathbb{R} write s<ts<t to mean s≤ts\le t and s≠ts\ne t. Then the following hold.

1. (Between any two reals.) For all x,y∈Rx,y\in\mathbb{R} with x<yx<y there is q∈Qq\in\mathbb{Q} with x<q<yx<q<y.

2. (Approximation.) For every x∈Rx\in\mathbb{R} and every ε∈R\varepsilon\in\mathbb{R} with ε>0\varepsilon>0 there is q∈Qq\in\mathbb{Q} with ∣x−q∣<ε|x-q|<\varepsilon.

3. (Density.) Let dd be the Euclidean distance on R\mathbb{R}, which makes R\mathbb{R} a metric space and which satisfies d(s,t)=∣s−t∣d(s,t)=|s-t| by the identification of the Euclidean distance on the real line with the absolute value metric, and let Td\mathcal{T}_{d} be the collection of metric open subsets of R\mathbb{R}, a topology by the theorem that metric open sets form a topology. Then Q\mathbb{Q} is a dense subset of the topological space (R,Td)(\mathbb{R},\mathcal{T}_{d}).

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