  In this paper we introduce and develop the theory of the Collatz process and
the method of dynamical balls. We leverage this theory to study the Collatz
conjecture. This theory also has a subtle connection with the infamous problem
of the distribution of Sophie germain primes. We also provide several
formulation of the Collatz conjecture in this language. Furthermore, we
introduce and develop the notion of dynamical systems induced by a fixed $a\in
\mathbb{N}$ and their associated induced dynamical balls. We develop tools to
study problems requiring to determine the convergence of certain sequences
generated by iterating on a fixed integer.
