Topology Tutorial
Topology Tutorial
II Semester 2024-25
Practice Sheet I
This Practice Sheet is intended to recall certain concepts from the theory of metric space
and to start working with the abstract notion of a topological space.
1. Show that in R, every open set can be written as a countable union of disjoint open
intervals.
2. Show that in R (with the usual metric), countable intersection of open sets need not
be open.
3. Show that in Rn , n ≥ 2, every open set can be written as a countable union of open
balls. Is it true that, every open set in Rn , n ≥ 2, can be written as a countable disjoint
union of open balls?
4. Find the collection of all interior points, limit points, and boundary points of the
following subsets of R or R2 with the usual metric.
(a) n1 : n ∈ N
n
(b) m : m ∈ N, 1 ≤ n ≤ m
n
(c) m : n, m ∈ N
(d) m + m1 : m ∈ N
n
(e) 1 + m : n, m ∈ N
n
(f) m + m : n, m ∈ N
(g) {(x, y) : 0 ≤ x ≤ 2, 1 < y < 2}
(h) {(x, y) : xy = 1, x > 0, x ∈ Q}
T
6. Prove that A = U ∈S U , where S = {U : A ⊆ U and U is closed}.
8. What are the Cauchy sequences in a discrete metric space? Show that every discrete
metric space is complete.
9. If A and B are open subsets of Rn , then A+B is also open, where A+B := {x+y | x ∈
A, y ∈ B}.
1
10. Let X be a metric space, and let U be an open set in X. Prove that U is disjoint from
a set A if and only if U is disjoint from Ā.
12. Let (X, d) be a metric space and τd be the collection of all open subsets of X. Prove
that τd is a topology on X.
13. Let X be the set of all natural numbers with the usual topology (i.e., N is considered
as a subset of R). Find all the open and closed sets in X.
14. Find examples of sets (̸= ∅, X) in a topological space (X, T ) that are:
(a) Show that TCC is a topology on X. This topology is called the co-countable
topology.
(b) Show that the finite intersection of non-empty open sets is non-empty. Is the
result true in the usual topology on R?
16. Let X be an uncountable set with the co-countable topology. Determine which of the
following sets are closed or open. Justify your answers:
17. Let X be the set of all real numbers with the lower limit topology. Let α, β ∈ X,
α < β. Find the interior and closure of:
(a) [α, β]
(b) (α, β]
(c) [α, β)
18. Let X be a topological space. Let A be a subset of X. Suppose that for each x ∈ A
there is an open set U containing x such that U ⊆ A. Show that A is open in X.
Find:
2
(a) The smallest topology containing T1 and T2 .
(b) The largest topology contained in T1 and T2 .
20. Let X = N. Let d1 be the usual metric on X, that is, the metric induced by the
Euclidean metric on R, d2 be the discrete metric on X, and d3 be defined by
1 1
d3 (n, m) = − , ∀ n, m ∈ X.
n m
Prove that
(a) d3 is a metric on X.
(b) All the three metrics induce the same topology on X.
(c) (X, di ) is complete for i = 1, 2, but not complete for i = 3.
(d) d1 is not a bounded metric, but d2 and d3 are bounded.
21. Prove that a subset U of a metric space X is open if and only if no sequence in X \ A
converges to a point of A.
n
22. Prove that in a finite set of n elements there are at most 2(2 −2) distinct topologies.
Verify that this upper bound is attained for n = 1, 2. On the other hand, for a set
of three elements, show that there exists 29 distinct topologies, and hence the upper
bound given above is far from attained for n = 3.
To the best of my knowledge, the problem of determining number of distinct topologies
on a finite set is still not completely solved. Interested reader may refer the following: