How can an object (say, car) accelerate from some velocity to another if there is an infinite number of velocities it has to attain first?

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E.g. how can the car accelerate from rest to 5m/s if it first has to be going at 10^(-100) m/s which in turn requires it to have gone through 10^(-1000) m/s, etc.? That is, if a car is going at a speed of 5m/s, doesn’t that mean the magnitude of its speed has gone through all numbers in the interval [0,5], meaning it’s gone through all the numbers in [0,10^(-100000) ], etc.? How can it do that in a finite amount of time?

In: Mathematics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

What’s stopping it, in your mind? In other words, can you explain why passing through an infinite number of values in a finite amount of time is somehow a problem?

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