Second-countable Space - Examples

Examples

• Consider the disjoint countable union . Define an equivalence relation and a quotient topology by identifying the left ends of the intervals - that is, identify 0 ~ 2 ~ 4 ~ … ~ 2k and so on. X is second countable, as a countable union of second countable spaces. However, X/~ is not first countable at the coset of the identified points and hence also not second countable.
• Note that the above space is not homeomorphic to the same set of equivalence classes endowed with the obvious metric: i.e. regular Euclidean distance for two points in the same interval, and the sum of the distances to the left hand point for points not in the same interval. It is a separable metric space (consider the set of rational points), and hence is second-countable.