TITLE: Prove that $2^{2^{\sqrt3}}>10$
QUESTION [26 upvotes]: With a computer or calculator, it is easy to show that
$$
2^{2^\sqrt{3}} = 10.000478 \ldots > 10.
$$
How can we prove that $2^{2^{\sqrt3}}>10$ without a calculator?

REPLY [13 votes]: Here is another mythical answer:
We want to prove $(\log_2 \log_2 10)^2 < 3$.
One way is to use the procedure outlined here to compute $\log_2$. The only mild complication is knowing when to stop. Since $\log_2$ is non-decreasing, it suffices to find $x\ge\log_2 10 $ and $y \ge \log_2 x$ such that $y^2 <3$.
The procedure is straightforward, I am just repeating the parts necessary to see how an upper bound is found. Given $x>0$, we first compute the integer part of $\log_2 x$ by finding the smallest $n$ such that ${x \over 2^n} \in [1,2)$, then $\log_2 x = n + \log_2 {x \over 2^n}$. Then, supposing $x \in (1,2)$, we repeatedly square $x$ until $x^{2^n} \in [2,4)$. Then we have
$\log_2 x = {1 \over 2^n}(1+ \log_2 {x^{2^n} \over 2})$, where ${x^{2^n} \over 2} \in [1,2)$, and so we can repeat ad nauseam.
For the purposes of this problem, we note that in the latter step, we always have $\log_2 x \le {1 \over 2^n}(1+ 1)$, since $\log_2 {x^{2^n} \over 2} \le 1$. So by replacing $\log_2 {x^{2^n} \over 2}$ by $1$ at any stage we obtain an upper bound. The error will be $\le {1 \over 2^{n_1}} \cdots {1 \over {2^{n_k}}}$, where the $n_1,...,n_k$ are the number of 'squarings' at each step.
Then it is a matter of trial and error to find suitable $x,y$:
$x = 3+{1 \over 4} + {1 \over 16} + {1 \over 128} + {1 \over 1024} + {1 \over 2048}+{1 \over 8192}+ {1 \over 65536}+ {1 \over 65536} = {217706 \over 65536} \ge \log_2 10$.
$y = 1+{1 \over 2} + {1 \over 8} +{1 \over 32} + {1 \over 128} + {1 \over 256} + {1 \over 1024} + {1 \over 2048} + {1 \over 16384} + {1 \over 65536}+ {1 \over 65536}= { 113510 \over 65536 } \ge\log_2 x$.
We have $y^2=({ 113510 \over 65536 })^2 < 3$.
No calculators or computers were harmed during this computation.