divide by zero...

[dannyday5821]

more of a maths question, but i was wondering, how would the world change if someone had verifed a way to divide by zero. what would this mean? how would things in the world change? would it change? would it be news worthy? you know, in the papers or on TV? would it be a good thing? or a bad thing? would we have to revise everything we know? how big of an impact would it create, if any impact?

id love to know the answer to this!

[gen2]

imagine any division such as a/b
As the value of b gets smaller, the value of a/b gets larger.
As b approaches zero, a/b approaches infinity.

effectively, dividing by zero = infinity

You cannot change that, so if someone declared dividing by zero was anything else, then they would be treated as a crackpot and ignored.

[dannyday5821]

okay, but for the shear purpose of argument, what if someone proved beyond all reasonable doubt, that "effectively, dividing by zero = infinity" is wrong, there is another answer. then what?

[chakka35]

But there cannot be another answer because there is no question, no mystery, no controversy.

You might as well ask what would happen if someone 'discovered' that the earth wasn't roughly spherical but was flat. It is a non-subject.

[Loosehead]

In the same way that we represent the square root of -1 as i (or j for engineers) we represent a/b where b=0 as the infinity symbol, 8 on it's side. So in a sense division by zero is possible, the answer is infinity and we have a symbol for it. Maths has well catered for this, nothig really to answer.

[nightmare]

It is not as straightforward as has been described.
The symbol for an infinite quantity is like an eight on its side, but it stands for an infinite quantity. How do you define "infinity" - it is not a number, or any specific quantity.
Division by zero is undefined, because we can not ascribe any meanig to the result.
No wonder Georg Cantor went gaga.