Dividing by Zero.......?

Question

I am an Engineer....have taken lots of math....but lately I have become bothered by the fact that division by zero does not exist...how do we know it doesnt exist???

I just read about the history of zero....

maybe we are missing another dimension of mathematics by assuming it cant exist...

Answer 1

I'm also facinated by this phenomenon. The logic is that because zero doesn't exist (zero = absolute nothing) then you can't divide it into anything. However, I think that you can divide it into something, but you'll actually get infinity, because you can infinitely divide anything until it approaches zero by Zeno's paradox. But, what do you do with such a number? Gregor Mendel showed that there are different sizes of infinity, and le Hospital's technique allows us to analyze a zero divided by zero equation at it's limits, so I think that there may be something of it afterall. Perhaps we just haven't found it yet. Afterall, math existed for some time before zero was even considered.