Let be a natural odd number which is not a perfect square. If and are strictly positive integers, prove that
Solution
a.
As , are natural numbers, the equality implies .
Two numbers have the same fractional part if and only if their difference is an integer, whence , which is absurd.
b.
Again, let us suppose that there is a natural number , for which there exist two not equal numbers , which are different from zero, such that . Then and ; moreover, the inequalities are strict, because the terms in the middle are irrational numbers.
We rewrite the inequalities as
and thus, by addition, we get .
From here, , which is a contradiction, because the term in the middle is natural ( is odd).
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