Wednesday, 21 October 2015

real analysis - A nontrivial everywhere continuous function with uncountably many roots?



This is my first post on SE, forgive any blunders.



I am looking for an example of a function f:RR which is continuous everywhere but has uncountably many roots (x such that f(x)=0). I am not looking for trivial examples such as f=0 for all x. This is not a homework problem. I'd prefer a nudge in the right direction rather than an explicit example.




Thanks!



Edit: Thanks all! I've constructed my example with your help.


Answer



The roots of a continuous function is always a closed subset of R : {0} is closed, thus f1({0}) is closed too.



If you have a closed set S, you can define a function f:xd(x,S), which is continuous and whose set of roots is exactly S : you can make a continuous function have any closed set as its set of roots.



Therefore you only have to look for closed sets that are uncountable.



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