Intuition. thinking of these
groups as
linear spaces,
Z/4 has only one basis element
1ˉ whereas
(Z/2)2 has both
(0ˉ,1ˉ) and
(1ˉ,0ˉ) as bases
Proof. (Note that this proof is not directly related to the intuition above.) Note that in
(Z/2)2, the identity has
order 0 and every other element has
order 1. On the contrary, in
Z/4, the element
2ˉ has
order 2. Since group
isomorphisms preserve
order, this means that the two
groups cannot be
isomorphic.