Problems
How about infinitely many very long buses with seats numbered \(1,2,3...\), each carrying infinitely many guests, all arriving at the hotel. Assume for now that the hotel is empty. But that seems like a lot of guests to accommodate. What should you do?
The whole idea of problems with Hilbert’s Hotel is about assigning numbers to elements of an infinite set. We say that a set of items is countable if and only if we can give all the items of the set as gifts to the guests at the Hilbert’s hotel, and each guest gets at most one gift. In other words, it means that we can assign a natural number to every item of the set. Evidently, the set of all the natural numbers is countable: we gift the number \(n\) to the guest in room \(n\).
The set of all integers, \(\mathbb{Z}\), is also countable. We gift the number \(n\) to the guest in room \(n\). Then we ask everyone to take their gift and move to the room double their original number. Rooms with odd numbers are now free (\(1, 3, 5, 7, \dots\)). We fill these rooms with guests from an infinite bus and gift the number \(-k\) to the guest in room \(2k+1\). Yes, that’s right: the person in the first room will be gifted the number \(0\).
Prove now that the set of all positive rational numbers, \(\mathbb{Q}^+\), is also countable. Recall that a rational number can be represented as a fraction \(\frac{p}{q}\) where the numbers \(p\) and \(q\) are coprime.
Imagine you see a really huge party bus pulling out, an infinite bus with no seats. Instead everyone on board is identified by their unique name, which is an infinite sequence of \(0\)s and \(1\)s. The bus has every person named with every possible infinite sequence of \(0\)s and \(1\)s, someone is named \(00010000..00...\), someone else \(0101010101...\), and so on. Prove that this time you will not be able to accommodate all the new guests no matter how hard you try.
In certain kingdom there are a lot of cities, it is known that all the distances between the cities are distinct. One morning one plane flew out of each city to the nearest city. Could it happen that in one city landed more than \(5\) planes?
Find all \(n\) such that a closed system of \(n\) gears in a plane can rotate. We call a system closed if the first gear wheel is connected to the second and the \(n\)th, the second is connected to the first and the third, the third is connected to the second and the fourth, the fourth is connected to the third and the fifth, and so on until the \(n\)th is connected to the \(n-1\)th and the first. In the picture, we have a closed system of three gears.
Show that there are no rational numbers \(a,b\) such that \(a^2 + b^2 = 3\).
There are infinitely many couples at a party. Each pair is separated to form two queues of people, where each person is standing next to their partner. Suppose the queue on the left has the property that every nonempty collection of people has a person (from the collection) standing in front of everyone else from that collection. A jester comes into the room and joins the right queue at the back after the two queues are formed.
Each person in the right queue would like to shake hand with a person in the left queue. However, no two of them would like to shake hand with the same person in the left queue. If \(p\) is standing behind \(q\) in the right queue, \(p\) will only shake hand with someone standing behind \(q\)’s handshake partner. Show that it is impossible to shake hands without leaving out someone from the left queue.