thought provoking

[Carmoral]

my daughter once said to me when she was about 9 years old, "what time was it when clocks were invented, its one of those questions that gets you thinking,

what has been the most thought provoking question you have ever been asked, or have asked yourself?

 

[hermanntrude]

well that one provoked quite a bit of thought.

i've often though of the chicken/egg dilemma, but then i realised that dinosaurs laid eggs, so that sorted that out.

one question i asked as a kid was "what was there before the big bang?" and i reckon that one has caused a lot of thought in it's time... although because there's no way to prove anything about it, it's one that you eventually just have to give up on.

A friend of mine once asked me "how many molecules are there in that?" referring to a sample i had made in the [chemistry] lab. I spent some time working it out and it turned out to be about 9,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (nine nonillian).

I asked my teacher what zero divided by zero was, and he didnt know. we agreed it was either zero (as zero divided by anything ought to be zero), one (as anything divided by itself is 1) or infinity (as anything dived by zero is infinite). I think generally people consider it to be zero but i still think about it

too many questions to ask and nowhere enough answers.

maybe the most thought provoking question is "how many questions are there?" or "how do i get the answers?"

 

[feronia]

Where does a circle begin?

 

[hermanntrude]

no thought needed there. A circle has no beggining or end. that's part of the definition of a circle

 

[feronia]

It is if you're three.

 

[agentkgb]

If you draw a circle so that the center is in the corner of a room (or box or whatever) and the edge of the circle tocuhes the two walls and the ceiling (or floor), is it a 270 degree circle or is it not a circle? It's not the most thought-provoking but I still try to figure it out.

 

[feronia]

Ok I give. It's not thought provoking but it got you two to think why it wasn't.

 

[Carmoral]

I would have thought the start of the circle is where you start to draw it, and then if you dont complete it, then it wouldnt be a circle but it would have a start and an end....phew made me dizzy...need to go lie down now!

 

[Carmoral]

take zero x it by zero and then add the first number you thought of...what would that be....er....

 

[hermanntrude]

Re: RE: thought provoking

if you dont complete it, then it wouldnt be a circle but it would have a start and an end

That's my point. if it has a start and an end it isnt a circle. In the case mentioned above it's an arc.

 

[hermanntrude]

Why can't you lift yourself up by the seat of your own pants, Dr. Suess stylee?

 

[feronia]

Do any of you have a three year old?

 

[Carmoral]

I used to, but they are all grown up now...they still act like 3 year old though lol

 

[feronia]

Then you get my point.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I asked my teacher what zero divided by zero was, and he didnt know. we agreed it was either zero (as zero divided by anything ought to be zero), one (as anything divided by itself is 1) or infinity (as anything dived by zero is infinite). I think generally people consider it to be zero but i still think about it.

Wrong on all options. Division by zero is what's called an undefined operation, math-speak for it's illegal. It's not zero, or infinity, or one, or anything else, except for being forbidden. Zero divided by zero, or anything divided by zero, is a meaningless statement in arithmetic. It has to be, because it produces illogical results otherwise. Pick a number, any number, for instance, call it X, and divide it by zero to get infinity. By the rules of arithmetic, then, infinity times zero must be X, and by extension, infinity times zero can then be shown to be any number at all. This is obviously nonsense, so the mathematicians solved it by forbidding the operation.

There are ways of dealing with such things in certain circumstances. For instance, we can say that the value of 1/Y approaches infinity as Y approaches zero, an idea that's at the heart of calculus, but we're not allowed to take the final step and say that 1/Y is infinite if Y=0. We can also demonstrate that the infinity of real numbers is infinitely greater than the infinity of integers.

But this is getting a little beyond the level of interest we're likely to find here.

 

[s_lone]

Ah but Dexter, don't you find that despite its illegality, the fact that infinity times zero can give any number is quite poetic? It's as if infinity and nothingness multiplied by each other created the necessary mathematical loop for everything to exist...

Or maybe not...

Here's one you might like...

y = 0.999...
so
10y = 9.999...

10y - y = 9y right? That means 9.999...- 0.999...= 9

If 9y = 9, then y = 1
Right?
But didn't y = 0.999...???????????????

Does that mean 0.999... = 1 ?

 

[Daz_Hockey]

I've always wondered who the first person was to milk a cow......and what in god's name did they think they were doing!!!!!

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Re: RE: thought provoking

Does that mean 0.999... = 1 ?

Sort of, but fiddling with infinitely long strings is a little tricky, and not really a procedure that algebra has rules for handling. What it really means is that the limit of 0.9999... approaches 1 as the number of nines in it approaches infinity.

And while I'm here and people are asking questions like Daz_Hockey's about the first person to milk a cow, I'd like to know who was the first person to eat a lobster. They don't look remotely edible. First guy to do it must have been seriously hungry. And who the Hell ever thought it might be a good idea to eat oysters raw from their shells? What was he thinking? "Jeez, snot on a shell, I wonder if that's good...? "

 

[feronia]

Or the jelly inside, that's just nasty.

 

[elevennevele]

Re: RE: thought provoking

I've always wondered who the first person was to milk a cow......and what in god's name did they think they were doing!!!!!

They were thinking that they were thirsty.

LOL.