Didymus

So if all these problems are based on the fact that it's undefined.... Define it. John's post on #12 said "When dealing with the real numbers, "infinitely small" doesn't make sense. There is a number system called the "hyperreal numbers," in which infinitesimals (these are quantities smaller than any nonzero number, but not equal to zero) and infinity exist. In this system, if we let be an infinitesimal, then and , but division by zero is still undefined." ... sounds like here is just closer to 0 than he thinks. The idea of it being "not 0" inherently makes it finite, therefore x/ can not be infinite because it's dividing by a finite (although undefinable) number. Here's how I see it: Priority 1: 0/x=0. Priority 2: x/0=an infinite multiplication of x. Thus, x/0=[math]\infty[/math] and -x/0=[math]-\infty[/math] and 0/0 falls under priority 1 because it's an infinite multiplication of 0, which is still 0. This also solves the 0/0=1 problem simply with a bit of priority. The problem of it not being able to be defined because it's undefined is no longer a problem... because it's defined to simply communicate the idea that an infinite number of points that do not take up space can fit into a finite space (or infinite points on a line segment). The idea of "video game skill does X damage divided evenly among targets in the area" hitting an area with no targets would still result in 0 damage being dealt because x/0 would pump out [math]\infty[/math]... but this would be multiplied by 0 because no targets were hit by this infinite damage. Thus, any similar examples of exceptions would be (x/0)0. Even when multiplied by an infinite number, 0 takes priority, balancing the problem and negating that exception to division by 0. Lastly, it would be accepted that a formula can't be balanced by multiplying or dividing by infinite numbers such as 0... explaining why A times 0 and B times 0 doesn't mean A=B. So, there ya go. All problems addressed with the sole exception of "it's not in my math book." If anyone has any difference objections, I'd love to see them... but all objections that have been presented, so far, are debunked above.

I'd refer you to the first page... because it's most certainly not impossible. It's, in fact, quite easy to grasp. However, some people ignore the direct example of it being done because SOME ways of checking the answer fail. Because graphs can be manipulated to the point where the question no longer makes sense, they ignore the example of it being solved. Yes, your text book will say it can't be done. It's wrong.

Which means you're checking the formula by misusing it. Finding a place to put an n next to a 0 so you can cancel it out on one side but keep it on the other. Very dishonest, sir. That's like saying 1+1=3 Because 0 x (1+1)=0 x 3 thus if 0=0 then 1+1=3. Wrong. You're abusing 0. Stop it.

Because 0's a boss and it don't take no (!%) from no one. I still say "you're not allowed to because it's undefined" is a rather ridiculous reason to reject a rather clear and logical definition. Also, I'm still feeding my crippling insomnia... so, more nitpicking: I very well may be misunderstanding something, but: this was posted earlier (I'm having issues getting the formula in a quote box: ----------------------------fake quote box---------------------------- . Then we have . We can then multiply both sides of the equation by , yielding . Simplifying, we arrive at , which by the transitivity of equality yields . But this is a contradiction, since we assumed ----------------------------/fake quote box---------------------------- How are you going from to ? You can drop the 1 on the left side because n x 1=n... but if , you can't just drop the n on the right side of the equation.

No. if[math]A \times B = C[/math], then [math]\frac {C}{B}=A[/math] With me so far? for example: [math]3 \times 5 = 15[/math] means [math]\frac {15}{3}=5[/math] and [math]\frac {15}{5}=3[/math] if [math]N \times 0 = 0[/math], then [math]\frac {0}{0}=N[/math] If dividing by 0 is a problem because when you check the math you get wonky answers... then multiplying by 0 is just as much of a problem. Fact is, 0 is tricky. That's why it's interesting. And that's why it's banned from so many formula. There are certainly ways to get illogical conclusions. But there are also ways to get logical ones. Why ignore the logical conclusions we CAN obtain for fear of the illogical ones we might obtain if we don't use some common sense? That seems to be the base of the issue. I work with a lot of engineers. And by golly, the more educated they are, the farther detached some tend to be from common sense. ... this is why I'm regularly handed blue-prints telling me to install bushings 40 feet outside of a part... because they're so tuned into hitting the bullseye perfectly that they miss the barn the target's attached to (figuratively).

So, perhaps, it would be appropriate that the idea of checking [math]\frac {N}{0}= \infty[/math] with [math]\frac {\infty}{0}=N[/math] simply isn't a rule that holds true any more than checking [math]N \times 0 = 0 [/math] with [math]\frac {0}{0}=N[/math]. It's just Okie dokie that one simply isn't a rule that holds true... yet because the other equally doesn't hold true, we just give up on the whole thing? If points on a line don't float your boat, go to the three dimensional version: A Box has a finite area. How many infinitely small objects can fit inside that box? Area A/Area B=number of objects that fit in the box. X/0=[math] \infty[/math] How is that not dividing by 0? (and no, I'm not ignoring your point about number lines. Comparing infinitely small points with the infinite number of numbers between numbers is a perfectly valid illustration. IMO, a better illustration of dividing by 0 being something other than infinity actually came from a video game I was playing called Heroes of Newerth. A character's ability targets a certain area and does, say, 500 damage divided equally among the number of targets he hits. One target takes full damage. if two targets are in the area, each takes half... but if he hits zero targets, how much damage did he do? 0, obviously. In this case X/0=0. Or, less nerdy: If I make a fruit cake and divide it equally among the people who want a slice... and 0 people want any... how much cake does each person get? 1/0=0 in this situation. However, this is part of the language of math. In any language, sometimes the same thing can have different meanings with a different context. From what I see, there are two perfectly legitimate ways to illustrate X/0 and two completely legitimate answers. The fact that there are two answers depending on the context of the problem doesn't mean the problem is invalid.

K, John. Let's extend that. [math]A \times B = C [/math] therefore [math]\frac {C}{B}=A[/math] So, if we can't divide by 0 on the basis of [math]1 = 0 \times \infty[/math] being wrong... then why can we multiply by 0? So, if [math] 1 \times 0 = 0[/math] then [math]\frac {0}{1}=0[/math], which we agree is legitimate. But also [math]\frac {0}{0}=1[/math]... which obviously doesn't work out. Yet [math]A \times B = C [/math] therefore [math]\frac {C}{B}=A[/math] So can we not Multiply by 0's anymore? Obviously we can, even though sometimes it doesn't check out. Being difficult to work backwards doesn't mean it's impossible to work forwards. Specifically, how is the above example of dividing Length A by Length B to get the number of B-lengthed segments not a legitimate division? We know there are infinite points in a given line segment because each point doesn't have a length... thus Length A/0=[math]\infty[/math]. Is that not dividing by 0? Or do you believe there are a finite number of lengthless points on a line segment?

Yet "the answer is that you can't divide by 0". ... Yet there are very basic calculations that rely on dividing by 0. I have 3 examples in the original post. Without dividing by 0, how would you express the number of points on a given line segment? Assuming points with no length: Length/0=infinite points. How is that not dividing by 0?

Petru, don't forget there are extremes to both sides. There are rational theists and atheists and there are fundamentalist fanatic theists and atheists. Fact is, there are a lot of interesting guesses about where the universe came from and where life came from. We could all be strings or we could all be loops or we could all be vibrations in dimensional branes or we could have been put here by one alien or another. But at best, the evidence for any theory is shady and circumstantial. You can have faith in whatever seems best to you.

So, daed... If you can't solve a problem with one method, but can solve the problem with other methods... Why blame the number just because one method can't handle the number? 0, 1 and infinity break a lot of rules. Doesn't mean they aren't useful. The thing about indeterminate forms is that there are multiple correct answers depending on the context of the question. The fact that multiple answers may be correct doesn't mean neither are correct. I.e. just because sqrt 4 can either be 2 or -2 doesn't mean either one is wrong. Depends on the context. Like the fact that one word may have two meanings.

Thanks

I want to know why people have such a hard time dividing by 0. Basic concept: in A/B=C, when B gets larger, C gets smaller. When B gets smaller, C gets larger. So A/0.1=10A and A/0.0001=10000A.... Obviously when B becomes infinitely small (0), C is an infinite multiple of A. Logical proof: if I want to save $100 and I save $0/month, how long until I reach my goal? 100/0=inf, therefore an infinite amount of time will pass and I will never reach my goal. Objection A: But, if A is negative, you'll net "negative infinity". Answer: yea. What's wrong with that? -A/.0001=(-10000A). Still works. objection B: if a/0=inf and b/0=inf but a and b are different, you can't have that. Answer: it works multiplying a and b by 0. Why not dividing? Objection C: it doesn't work functionally/can't make it into a word problem. Answer: how many points are there on a line segment? Infinite because points have a length of 0. Thus length A/length b (0)=inf. How many objects can I fit in this box? The smaller the item, the more objects. If the item is infinitely small, it's just a 3d line segment problem. Volume A/0= an infinite amount of spaces that take up no space can fit in a box of any area. So where is the problem other than 0/0? Even that isn't a problem because there are 3 conflicting rules (0/x=0, x/x=1, x/0=inf) ... And even that is solved by picking rule takes priority. So.... What problem is there with dividing by 0?

I'm introducing my daughter to math and I can't remember if there's a quick rule to check if a large number is divisable by 7 and 8 at a glance. 1: if it's whole 2: if it's even. 3: if the digits add up to 3,6 or 9 4: if the 10s digit is even and the 1s digit is 0,4,8 or the 10s digit is odd and 1s digit is2,6 5: if it ends in 0,5. 6: if 2 and 3 both work. 7: ? 8: ? Can't think of a simple rule 9: digits add to 9 10: ends in 0 0: everything is divisable by 0. Haters gonna hate. ... I think when I was in school they said there wasn't one for those... But they said the same thing about 4.

For simplicity, I'm assuming Instantaneous speed along a straight line. Less variables than trying to account for anything for which you'd need to specify "velocity." No changing directions or calculating vector or acceleration for now. I'll definitely plug your thing in there... to clarify your variables though, are v1 and v2 referring to the individual speed of the two objects or the difference between linear speed and dilated speed? I'd assume the two objects except you're subtracting them... but if it were the other way around I don't follow why you'd multiply one by the other. Part of it looks like the lorentz transform... except I thought you had to take the square root of (C^2-v^2)... so I'm looking at something wrong... which... oh my. I should go to bed.

1: You're right. Fixed the bracket problem. Thanks. It's not for anything "useful" ... I've just never liked the theory, so I'm looking for a different way to visualize different circumstances without having to do math over and over. Here's what I put in: (speeds in the same unit of measurement, obviously) Speed 1 is in cell c2 Speed 2 is in cell c3 speed of C is in cell c4. C5 shows the linear speed for reference: =C2+C3 C6 should show the speed according to einstein's dookie theory: =(C2+C3)/(1+(C3*C2)/(C4*C4)) C7 shows the correlation between the two: =C6/C5 (then a separate column to do the same thing converted into different units of measure) kinda a cheat sheet to play with to help me visualize how much different parts really change when each other part changes. Now I'm trying to figure out how to stick the lorentz transform in there in a meaningful way. Something like: =1/(sqrt((C4*C4)-(C6*C6))/C4) ... should show the factor by which time is thought to compress based off the total adjusted speed... then I could compare that to the same thing for the individual speeds in c2 and c3 to try to look at how one object can experience time at different rates relative to different objects

Doing a project in excel to make a little form to plug in linear speeds and have it spit out some data on the speeds estimated by SR and all that... And working with cells instead of normal variables made me entirely forget the formula... What part did I miss here: (V+u)/(1+(vu)/c^2) ... What part did I screw up?

Weak point in that experiment: define "uncharged." It would be as difficult to reach an absolutely uncharted state as it is for matter to reach a state of absolute 0 temperature.... I.e. impossible. What is the simplest explanation: that there was the smallest electromotive pressure differential+small gravitational effect+the possibility that the two plates experienced some inertial forces? ....or that virtual particals wink in and out of existance from nothingness/parallel dimensions? ...shen It they successfully causes both plates to be perfectly discharged relative to each other, simply moving them to the test area could induce at least a minor charge.

Arete, your post deserves more time than I have at the moment. I'll get to yours after work. John: ...you seem to think a lot of people with PhDs are unqualified. Ok. Ei: ...then you missed a few books.... Or used a pretty horrible translation. Did you actually look into the original Greek and Hebrew to verify the passages as correctly translated? I agree, mainstream "Christianity" is messed up.... But has nothing to do with the bible. ...yet anti-biblical teachings seem to have given you a prejudice. For one, "hell" seems to be a primary point of concern for you... Yet is a blatant mistranslation... Likely invented by "a certain church" as a way to threaten people into making donations so that people can make monetary contributions to buy indulgences and avoid the punishment their church made up. ...gotta be careful about those things. As for Hovind.... I've watched his stuff.... And a majority is easily disproven and skimmed over.... There are a number of darn good points. Polystrate trees, the inaccuracies of carbon dating, etc. ... But a literal 6k year earth, giants, and what he talks about with seeds.... Not so much. Also, I'm pretty sure his claims about that woodpecker are completely unfounded. ...yes, people do skim past legitimate work if they think they can get recognition and financial reimbursement without having to do things... In the community, you're paid for results. There are a LOT of cases of lab coats giving the results they're paid for.... By cooking the books or outright lying. Humans are too quick to put their faith in a man... Either with a white coat or with a cleric position.... It's a part of human nature to cling to simplistic bliss of authority

Deflect as much as you like. Whoever gave you the ideas you have was not qualified to teach you that subject and did a poor job. Endy: and that's how it should be. However, there is an amount of pressure to conform to the popular faith of the community based on cheap social pressure instead of evidence (for example, this thread.) There are a LOT of Christians out there.... That, by itself, does not make Christianity fact. There are also a lot of junk scientists spreading obviously ridiculous theories as supporting evidence for a baseless popular opinion. Yes, that tooth looks a bit different than a human.... That doesn't make it a missing link, it's from a modern pig. DNA tests debunked it, yet people still claim that this is among the "vast" evidence of spontaneous abiogenesis. Look at those vestigial legs in whales and snakes! Proof that each evolved from an animal with legs, and therefore interkingdom evolution and therefore abiogenesis.... (Or that's how those animals make babies). Look at this embyology chart!..... That was an admitted hoax a century ago.... Still in school books, presented as fact. As much as people repeat that it's not a matter of faith... Ask for evidence.... Get poorly presented Wikipedia articles chalk full of circular reasoning. ... Even at this point, all the articles provided (unless I've missed one) are all ad populum claims about people who have supporting evidence for macroevolution.... None on the topic of abiogenesis... Which apparently is verified by extention when it's convenient.... Yet "isn't part of the theory" when inconvenient.

And you dont see any correlation there? Give you a hint. Replace a bible with a book on physics. If a person attended no classes, had no instruction, didn't ask for any guidance... But studied a physics book by himself for years, and decided physics as a whole repulsed him and was wrong.... Still no problem with thats? Or is it a strawman when applied to your current faith, but perfectly logical when equally applied to a contrary faith?

And, from what he communicated, it seemed that his objection to that faith was that it had to be accepted without question (I'd assume certain individuals were also taking advantage of the unquestioning faith they required). I have no reason to call into question the honesty of his faith or his intent or any of that... but if someone pushed a theory inappropriately (by demanding unquestioning acceptance)... try keeping the theory, but questioning every aspect of it... rather than agreeing not to question it, but throwing the theory out on the basis of it not being questioned. The fact that he left, thinking that in order for a person to be religious, they must not question it demonstrates he never gave it a fair shake from the beginning because (by the fault of those teaching him), he never learned the theory to begin with, no matter how long he sat patiently waiting to believe it. The bible refers to such empty faith as a "dead faith." It's not the fault of the person or the faith itself... but the fact that the faith wasn't "used." It's like having a gym membership... but never getting any stronger... because no matter how long you own a gym membership, if you don't go and work out... you'll never improve. And Arete... Yes... I know that people from different fields make supporting claims. Since we're pointing out fallacies, that's argumentum ad populum. Many people making weak claims... are still a bunch of weak claims. Honestly... Biogeographic studies? This would be like "Proving" the bible because you can prove that Israel exists. Yes, you can find similar species spread out around the environments.... Yes, this very well may support that those species came from a common species. That is absolutely no evidence to extend that two bears came from the same bear to suggesting that the bear shares an ancestor with a fish. Non Sequitur. (although, yes, you can also point out that I made a correlation. Any correlations that disagree with your viewpoint will be called strawman on the basis of it disagreeing with you and therefore you finding it illogical. That's not how fallacies work.) The similarity between cell structures is also circumstantial. Yes, two different kinds will both have mitochondria and other basic parts of a cell. The number of similarities don't "negate" the dissimilarities. Yes, you have a pile of evidence. None of which is substantial under even basic scrutiny. That doesn't negate the work. If we find a way to generate electricity from a lemon... and assume that lemons must have evolved from tiny suns because the sun has energy too.... that conclusion is entirely wrong. That doesn't negate the many uses of a lemon, including it's conductivity. Likewise, there is much we can learn from the functional uses of evolutionary theory. None of it supports the theory that Aerobic multicellular sexually reproducing organisms share an ancestor with anaerobic single cellular asexually reproducing organisms. ... even if some of their structure is comparable.

If the longer you study, the less questions you want to ask... You haven't been studying correctly from the start. If you studied with someone pressuring you to question things less, this person wasn't qualified to begin with. Similarly, when an idea is presented that requires a person to simply accept that it's the way things are and you need to simply accept it without bothering to see the evidence for yourself.... That's a symptom of an idea that begs the most scrutiny. Those who attack others for questioning what they haven't questioned themselves are only doing themselves a disservice.

If you think a requirement of theology is that it's accepted without question... You've never adequately researched religion. Some require that it is constantly questioned.

It seems that a phrase wasn't communicated clearly enough. This thread was split off from another, where the original poster essentially asked of science would be open to religion or faith of any sort. My response was that it already does. I agree that the extent to which evolution has been observed, it's rational and verifiable, however great faith is placed in the foundation of evolution, which is biogenisis. Just because a person relates the two does not mean that person doesn't understand the differences. In fact, that's the entire point. I agree that genetic traits are selectively passed down as this has been observed. Darwin saw a bunch of finches and believed that they had a common bird ancestor. This is a logical step. To extend this to stating that the finch shares a common ancestor with the tree it sits on.... Is a leap in faith that has never been verified and can not be supported no matter how many studies show the relationship between different breeds of dogs or corn. A similar step is to ask, if we all came from a single cell.... How did that cell get here? Yes, that's the start of a separate theory, but a related one. One that has no direct evidnce, yet is accepted on faith. If anyone has found or read about direct evidence supporting biogenisis.... I'd like to see it. Any who accept a theory for which they have seen no evidence... Are taking part in the "faith" machine they seem to be so vocal against. I'm not "crying persecution"... I understand my limitations. I'm simply pointing out the logical blasphamy of telling people how foolish it is to have faith in (something other than what you have faith in).

If speculation against forum guidelines, that's one thing... But, when the person who posted the original question says that the thread has come to the intent of their original question.... Please don't tell the original poster that they're off the topic of the thread they started. The point isn't a speculation on electromagnetism.... No one suggested that. The point was to ask the physics-astronomy section their observation of what astronomy says about physics. In the general physics section, a conversation about the conservation of energy (not just electricity) lead to a disagreement about whether gravity played a part in the sun's heat and the earth's internal heat. One side suggested that the earth's molten core was a product of radioactive material in the core and that the pressure of gravity plays essentially no role in the earth's heat... Let alone the formation of those elements in the earth's core. Chicken and egg stuff... Is the core hot because of those elements, or are those elements there because the core is hot and under pressure? This extended to the sun... We get energy from the sun as part of the atomic action there.... But is it a coinsidence that all celestial objects with that reaction happen to be very massive? Or is the sun's own gravity fueling that reaction? Would that reaction happen absent that amount of gravity? Hence, this thread. The role gravity plays in a celestial body's thermal activity is on topic for the astronomy section.