Why can’t dividing by 0 be done in a theoretical field?

358 views

As a layperson who is interested in math, imaginary numbers always fascinated me. Like in the real world you taking the square of a negative makes no sense whatso ever, but in theoretical math you can just invent new imaginary numbers, make it so that *i*^2 = -1 and suddenly you have just revolutionized math. If this is useful, why can’t you break other rules and account for them with new imaginary symbols?

So let’s pretend that we call them made up numbers and use *m* to represent them. Why is *m*=1/0 impossible when something like *i*^2 = -1 is not?

In: 27

29 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It doesn’t fit into the rest of math.

1/m = 1*(0/1)=0

2/m= 2*(0/1)=0

So
1/m=0=0=2/m

1/m=2/m

m*1/m=m*2/m

1=2 ????

You are viewing 1 out of 29 answers, click here to view all answers.