Searching through past posts I didn’t see anything specific to this. As I understand it, we can approximate what occurs when dividing by zero if you graph the function [y=1/x](https://i.imgur.com/MebU9l3.png) (ripped from google)
As X approaches zero, it becomes both infinity or negative infinity, which results in it being undefined.
Couldn’t positive or negative infinity be defined as the square root of infinity? or the square root of infinity squared? Obviously not all infinities are equivalent.
Thanks
Sincerely, a person who failed math
In: 0
From a purely mathematical standpoint, infinity doesn’t make sense. It’s not a value or functional definition. It’s more of a philosophical concept that you can kind of think about, but it isn’t a value. For example, when you say ‘the square root of infinity,’ that’s not really a mathematically derived value, and if you were to try and approach it from a mathematical standpoint, it’s just infinity. The same way infinity plus anything, minus anything, multiplied by anything, divided by anything or have any other function applied to it is still infinity (logically, of course). And as for using limits to ‘approximate’ values, such as y=1/x, you’re right, you can follow a line to see that it approaches positive/negative infinity, but so does the function y=2/x, y=3/x, and every other divisive function, which means that the definition of y=1/x would be the same as the definition of y=2/x as x approaches 0, which is what saying that dividing any value by zero has no definition means.
I don’t really know how to explain this concept to a five year old with regards to exactly what it means, other than handing them a pizza and asking them how many cuts would it take to divide it into zero slices
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