Because the professor said so, plus the calculator says error so it must be true.

Really? Just think about it.


How many nothings do you have to put together to get a something?

The answer is greater than infinity. But it's not, because you will never get there.

its cause there is no logical way of dividing something by nothing

Hmm you called? Suppose 1 / 0 is defined. Then there's a number b such that 1 / 0 = b. Multiply both sides by zero. Therefore 1 = 0 x b. But 0 x b = 0 so we deduce 1 = 0. Contradiction.

Dividing by zero=infinity, so you can, it just always gives you the same answer.

In a certain sense, this is correct. However, it is not a trivial matter to introduce "infinity" into the number system. How does it interact with other numbers? What's infinity + 1? What's infinity / infinity?

Ultimately, the proof I gave above holds in the sense that there is no real number b such that 1/0 = b can be defined consistently. If you extend the real number line to include a point at infinity, certain other things can be said. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_projective_line for details.

because zero is non dimensional, it is the "recognition" of an absence, the lack of something

how many slices can you divide a pizza into if the slices are 0 inches long, 0 inches wide and the pizza is 0 inches in height?

thank you for making this post, and thank you enkelin and demonblood for explaining some of it.. i always wondered how it works.

About Infinity, see this video, and check out the other videos in this channel, pretty sweet Nerdy stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg

As Demoonblood mentioned, a nice way of thinking about it would be diving something by 0.1

What you're effectively saying is that you can fit 100 tenths of apples into the same space as 10 apples.

But if these pieces of apple are so small as to not exist how do you determine how many pieces of 'nothing' are equal to 10 apples?