by Jan Tz » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:23 am
Not quite connected, except by lack of logic:
When I was a kid, just learning arithmetic, we were always told not to divide by zero. Can't be done. I never understood why until much later and then I gasped in horror at the realization...
If you have a bunch of stuff and you want to divide it by three, you separate all the stuff into three piles.
If you have a bunch of stuff and you want to divide it by two, you separate it into two piles.
If you have a bunch of stuff and you want to divide it by one, you leave it as it is, in one pile.
If you have a bunch of stuff, like all the constituents of the universe, and you want to divide it by zero, you have to separate it into zero piles, which means...
IT'S THE END OF THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT.
No wonder they don't explain these things in second grade.