How come there isn’t an imaginary system for dividing a number by 0, while there is one for taking the square root of a negative number?
In: Mathematics
First of all, you can’t take the square root of a negative number. If you put that in any calculator you’ll get something like undefined or domain error because it’s more or less impossible. You can however multiply the square root of a positive number by a negative number to make the root negative. Like if you do the square root of -4 you’ll get an error but if you do -1 x square root of 4 you’ll get -2. Now onto your main question. Dividing by 0 doesn’t really boil down to the mathematics of it all it boils down to logic. For an equation 10 divided by 2, say you have 10 apples and you need to divide them into 2 crates evenly, you would get 5 in each crate. Pretty simple. Well what happens if you have no crates. You have nowhere to put the apples so there’s no way to define what happens to them. If mathematicians wanted to they could just make the answer be 0 or give the number the properties of 1(like the imaginary system you’re talking about), but then down the line you’ll get other errors that won’t make sense. Does that help?
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