Calcium is a C library for real and complex numbers in a form suitable for exact algebraic and symbolic computation. Numbers are represented as elements of fields 
 where the extension numbers 
 may be algebraic or transcendental. The system combines efficient field arithmetic with automatic construction of fields and ideals of algebraic relations, resulting in a practical computational model of 
 and 
 in which equality is rigorously decidable for a large class of numbers which includes 
 as a subset.