Section 16.2, due Wednesday December 1

1.(Difficult) I don't understand perfectly how the discrete logarithm for Elliptical curves are the same as discrete logarithms. Is it similar to if you take the log of both side and the exponent comes down as a constant? More examples for how to turn plain text into cipher text would also be helpful.

2.(Reflective) Square roots mod p seem to come up a lot through many sections and it shows how important they are in cryptography. I would never have guessed that, but square roots mod p have come of often. Finding square roots mod p are difficult though, so what will happen when the numbers get too large to calculate? We only saw for small examples, but we may have large square roots to find.