Tuesday 27 September 2011

Dividing by ZERO

Last week in class Professor Antosz wanted us to come up with a way to teach students how to divide a number by zero.  My first instinct was to search the web for the solution.  I found this video on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fBZK106C3Q
Seeing as that was no help, I turned to Google. The result was the following image.


I know that dividing by zero is undefined..... but why? When zero is divided by 3, it is equal to zero but not the other way around.

Upon further thought, the reason dividing by zero does not equate relates to the following examples.   I have 3 empty jars. These jars are empty thus they represent 0. Now I am going to divide them into 3 groups.  Therefore taking 0 and dividing it into 3 makes sense. It equals 0. I have 0 things in 3 different groups!
On the other hand what if I now took those three jars and filled them with jam.  I want to take these 3 jars of jam and split them into zero groups.  Unfortunately, I am unable to take these 3 jars and divide them into 0 groups. It is an impossibility to take a thing of substance and put it in no place.  Resulting in  3 / 0 = undefined.



Zero is a number that can be used in a multitude of ways.  It can be added and subtracted, it can be a symbol or a place, and it has the ability to create shapes and images. However, when taking a anything and dividing it by zero…. It can only be undefined!


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