RE: Dividing by zero
August 10, 2013 at 3:59 am
(This post was last modified: August 10, 2013 at 4:05 am by FallentoReason.)
You can't divide by zero because it's an impossible "task". Say we want to divide 1 by 4.. well, all that means is that we're seeing how many times 4 fits into one. This is easy enough to do with the answer being one quarter. Now try your luck with 1/2. 1 divided by 1/2 (i.e. 0.5) is 2. 1 divided by 1/4 (i.e. 0.25) is 4. Let's go even smaller, say divide 1 by 1/100 (i.e. 0.01). That gives you 100. Well, by now you should see that the smaller you go (i.e. 1/2 => 1/4 => 1/100 etc etc) the bigger the answer. Why is this? Simply because what you're dividing by is so small that it fits lots and lots of times into (in this case) 1. So when you divide by *zero*, by nothing, zilch... well, how many times does *nothing* go into 1? It can't exactly be done, as you're adding 0 to 0 to 0... ...to 0 to 0 to get, well, 0 so far!
If you want to get real technical, the answer to 1/x approaches infinity as x approaches 0. As soon as you hit 0 though, the answer is undefined because it doesn't matter how many 0's you add, you'll never get to 1.
On a side note, in certain branches of philosophy, they've defined 1/0 as infinity, but that really bothers me as the heavy calculus stuff says otherwise!
If you want to get real technical, the answer to 1/x approaches infinity as x approaches 0. As soon as you hit 0 though, the answer is undefined because it doesn't matter how many 0's you add, you'll never get to 1.
On a side note, in certain branches of philosophy, they've defined 1/0 as infinity, but that really bothers me as the heavy calculus stuff says otherwise!
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
