Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ia/paper-4/8e/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ia Paper 4 8E b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Fix a positive rational radius . Distinct disjoint circles of radius have centers more than apart, so their open interior disks are pairwise disjoint. Each such disk contains a point of the countable dense set . Fix an enumeration of and assign to each disk the first rational point it contains. Disjointness makes this assignment injective, so there are only countably many circles of radius .
The positive rational numbers are countable. Taking the countable union of countable sets over all rational radii proves that the whole collection is countable.
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