An associative ring R is called potent provided that for every $x\in R$, there is an integer $n(x)>1$ such that $x^{n(x)}=x$. A celebrated result of N. Jacobson is that every potent ring is commutative. In this note, we show that a ring R is potent if and only if every nonzero subring S of R contains a nonzero idempotent. We use this result to give a generalization of a recent result of Anderson and Danchev for reduced rings, which in turn generalizes Jacobson’s theorem.

With entries of the adjacency matrix of a simple graph being regarded as elements of $\mathbb{F}_{2}$, it is proved that a finite commutative ring $R$ with $1\neq 0$ is a Boolean ring if and only if either $R\in \{\mathbb{F}_{2},\mathbb{F}_{2}\times \mathbb{F}_{2}\}$ or the eigenvalues (in the algebraic closure of $\mathbb{F}_{2}$) corresponding to the zero-divisor graph of $R$ are precisely the elements of $\mathbb{F}_{4}\setminus \{0\}$ . This is achieved by observing a way in which algebraic behavior in a Boolean ring is encoded within Pascal’s triangle so that computations can be carried out by appealing to classical results from number theory.

This paper is about rings $R$ for which every element is a sum of a tripotent and an element from the Jacobson radical $J(R)$. These rings are called semi-tripotent rings. Examples include Boolean rings, strongly nil-clean rings, strongly 2-nil-clean rings, and semi-boolean rings. Here, many characterizations of semi-tripotent rings are obtained. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a Morita context (respectively, for a group ring of an abelian group or a locally finite nilpotent group) to be semi-tripotent are proved.