Abstract
Straightedge and compass constructions can he used to produce line segments of various lengths relative to some preassigned unit length. Although the lengths are all real numbers, it turns out that not every real number can be obtained in this way. The lengths which can be constructed are rather special.
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Additional Reading for Chapter 2
G. Birkhoff and S. MacLane, A Survey of Modern Algebra, New York, Macmillan, 1953.
I. Niven, Numbers: Rational and Irrational, Random House, New York, 1961.
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Jones, A., Pearson, K.R., Morris, S.A. (1991). Algebraic Numbers and Their Polynomials. In: Abstract Algebra and Famous Impossibilities. Universitext. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8552-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8552-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-97661-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8552-1
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