This talk on $p$-adic Numbers was held on Friday February 3, 2017 in MC 4045. The talk was given by Akshay Tiwary.
Abstract
In this talk we will discover an alternate way to define the "size" of a ration al number. We will define the p-adic absolute value and see that this absolute value is Non-archimedean and that this fact leads to a a geometry that is very different from the geometry of the Real numbers (every p-adic triangle is isosc eles!). In addition I will show you some fun ideas from p-adic numbers (which I will denote by $\mathbb{Q}_p$ like the fact that $\sum_{n = 1}^{\infty} 3^n$ converges and how every element of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ has a base $p$ expansion. This is meant to be a very leisurely talk with almost no prerequisites and it should be fun so please come for it!