First of all, my background in Homology and Algebraic Topology is very limited and doesn't include much except for the basic concepts; I'm trying to understand some Homology techniques as applications relevant to a course in combinatorics I'm taking.
Anyway, in class we've seen the example of computing the homology groups of $\mathbb{P}^2$ – The projective plane over $\mathbb{R}$. It is known that $\beta_0(\mathbb{P}^2 ; \mathbb{F})=1$ since the projective plane is connected. Now, it turns out that $H_2(\mathbb{P}^2 ; \mathbb{Q})=0$ while $H_2(\mathbb{P}^2 ; \mathbb{F}_2) \cong \mathbb{F}_2$, but the lecturer hasn't really explained how it is computed.
Any explanation on the computing method would be greatly appreciated, as will be any intuition on this whole concept, or references to further reading (I know Hatcher's book on Algebraic Topology, but didn't find it very helpful).
Best Answer
It turns out that the homology groups $H_{\bullet}(X,\mathbb{Z})$ of a space $X$ with $\mathbb{Z}$-coefficients determine the homology groups $H_{\bullet}(X,A)$ with coefficients in any abelian group $A$. The key result here is the (very well named!) Universal Coefficient Theorem.
The basic idea is that our first guess at $H_i(X,A)$ is simply $H_i(X,\mathbb{Z}) \otimes A$. This is a good first guess in that in all cases there is a natural injective map $H_i(X,\mathbb{Z}) \otimes A \rightarrow H_i(X,A)$. As you have seen, this map need not be an isomorphism. The universal coefficient theorem tells you that its cokernel is $\operatorname{Tor}(H_{i-1}(X,\mathbb{Z}),A)$ and also that the sequence is (non-canonically) split, i.e.,
$$H_i(X,A) \cong (H_i(X,\mathbb{Z}) \otimes A) \oplus \operatorname{Tor}(H_{i-1}(X,\mathbb{Z}),A).$$
Here $\operatorname{Tor}( \ , \ )$ is the first "Tor group" of homological algebra. It may well be that you don't know what this gadget is. (I didn't when I first learned algebraic topology.) So I found it helpful to write down a "cheatsheet" for $\operatorname{Tor}(X,Y)$ when $X$ and $Y$ are both finitely generated abelian groups. Indeed, since $\operatorname{Tor}$ is bi-additive and symmetric, it is enough to know that for all $m,n \in \mathbb{Z}^+$,
$\operatorname{Tor}(\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}) = 0$ and
$\operatorname{Tor}(\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}) \cong \mathbb{Z}/\operatorname{gcd}(m,n) \mathbb{Z}$.
As a first exercise, try to use all this information to confirm that the homology groups of $\mathbb{R} \mathbb{P}^2$ with $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$-coefficients are as you said.
(There is also a Universal Coefficient Theorem for cohomology in which the correction term involves $\operatorname{Ext} = \operatorname{Ext}^1$ instead of $\operatorname{Tor}$...)