In science, and maths, can you get less than nothing?

Question

If a drinking glass/cup etc is empty, is it full of nothing? If it is full of nothing, it must be full of something. So, nothing must be something. Therefore nothing cannot exist. If nothing does exist, can you get less than nothing? Sounds silly I know, but I know what I mean.

Answer 1

Your logic is faulty at this step:
"it must be full of something. So, nothing must be something"

Read carefully and find that you have changed the meaning of the words when going from one statement to the other.

If a glass is full of vacuum, is it empty? Is vacuum something? Is vacuum nothing. The answer is that it doesn't matter. Depends on what you WANT in the glass and how that will serve a useful purpose.

Answer 2

There are some really silly answers already on here.

Negative numbers is ok. that is less than Zero which is ofter mis used as nothing. i.e. -2, -1, 0, 1, 2

If you glass is exposed to air then yes it will be full of air.

The Antimatter does not fit the question. If the glass was full of air then you dont need anti matter. And Anti matter does not relate to numbers less than 0 (Nothing).

A true vaccum is nothing, not less than nothing.

String theory it total rubbish, dont believe it. Its totally wrong because its not beautiful and reasonable.
(Spheres is the way forward there)

Less than nothing is a fraction???? I hope she didnt get an A in her o levels. God help the country.

Graham I is on the ball, top marks.

To answer your other point though Nothing is not something. You have assigned a name to a something you can not really imagine.
What colour is nothing? Black? No, because nothing does not have any colour nor does it absorb light, there is nothing, and you can not describe it.

How big or small is nothing? You cant say as nothing isnt there but the idea of nothing is also unbounded - infinity.

Answer 3

In maths you can get less than nothing. Negative numbers represent a "shortage" of something, like in economics. In physics, however, if you wanted to mathematically represent the directions of two opposing forces of two moving systems, one would be positive from convention and the other would have to be negative, so as to indicate that it's going in the opposite direction and thus that they counter or compensate one another.

As for the glass, well, I really can't see how it could be filled with less than nothing. Like others have already said, it's full of air. Either that, or it's in a vacuum. "Nothing", "something", "anything" and "everything" are just abstract words which you can use and interpret any way you like. :P So it's really only a matter of point of view, just like the classical problem of whether it's half-filled or half-empty.

It is full of nothing if you're talking only about the water it was supposed to be filled with. Now if you also consider the air which always fills it at least partially, then it has to have something, right?

Answer 4

In mathematics, nothing is not often used, except sometimes to mean the empty set. Since the concept of more than or less than does not really apply to set comparisons, less than nothing doesn't really have any meaning there.

It is also sometimes used to mean zero, and it is certainly possible to have values less than zero - these are called negative numbers.

In physics, nothing is generally used to denote a vacuum - this is by definition a volume of space which is devoid of matter (or at least an absolute vacuum is). Again, there is no meaningful sense in which you can say "less than nothing"

In your example, generally speaking an empty glass is full of air, so it is not full of nothing. You can certainly have less, since you could have less air in the glass (by having the air at a lower pressure).

Answer 5

Looks like you have some muddled thinking here. A German philosopher one described nothing as a "thing" that "noths". However in reality nothing kind of means not perceptible. So a balloon full nothing or a glass full of nothing is described as such because we can't see the air (the thing that is in fact inside). With scientific equipment you can perceive or detect the air that is inside. Your question is about "things" not the common use of the term nothing to me zero so I think maths does come into this. For me the truest nothing is the void of outer-space. Or even the unimaginable boundaries of the universe.

Answer 6

If you class the air in your glass as "nothing" you can remove the air (Nothing) causing a vacuum. Which means that you now have less than nothing in the glass

Answer 7

There is no such thing as nothing - no-one has succeeded in creating a PERFECT vacuum, and outer space is full of a rich variety of stuff. As for the "boundaries" of space, has this responder discovered them? If so, kindly step forward for your Nobel Prize.

Answer 8

there is no vacuum. as to your empty glass, it might be empty of particular substances like water, but its not empty of matter. in mathematics, you can not get less than nothing. zero (0) in maths is not nothing. it is a significant number even though it represents a place of emptiness.

Answer 9

Math obviously has infinite negative numbers as it does infinite positive numbers so the answer to your question is yes.

As to your annex, however, math and philosophy don't mix since they are polar opposites in terms of discipline so when an issue gets philosophical, you can't solve it with equations -- liquor might be better!

Answer 10

i glad you know what you mean. basically, an empty glass is full of air molecules and thats something. so thats what the something that nothing is that youre missing...air