Why can't you divide by 0?

Answer 1

you can

Answer 2

Division is nothing but sharing ! Say if you are dividing 10 by 2 - it means that you are sharing the 10 among 2 @ each one 5. When you ask divide something by 0 - you need not share at all. That is why you can't divide by 0. This is the logical reason for the question. Mathematical inconsistencies have been discussed by many others.

Answer 3

Well, let's do the following.

Suppose 1/0 is equal to x. Then, if you can divide by zero, you can multiply by zero and cancel it out. So you do (1/0)*0, which gives 1 for the left side. X times 0 would equal 0.

Thus, we have 1=0. This means that we have a problem in the initial equation, so we cannot divide by zero.

Answer 4

If you have two non-zero numbers and divide them, for example, 8/2, this is really the same as saying "how many times does 2 go into 8?" in which case the answer is 4.

In general, for any fraction (which is just division), you have x/y, where y goes into x a certain number of times (not necessarily evenly, but definitely some non-zero number).

Now, if you have some number y/0, it's like asking "what value x times 0 will equal y"? If y is non-zero, well there's NO x that will satisfy the condition 0*x = y. If y is 0, then there are INFINITE x's that will satisfy the condition 0*x = 0.

Therefore, as you can see, it makes absolutely no sense to divide by zero. Thus the field of mathematics holds that "division by zero is undefined."

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Answer 5

Hi:

Here my answer about it:


The reason you can't divide by zero is this

what is division?

it one of two answers

repeated subtraction or multiplication in reverse

Okay! here how to think it :

divide 9/ 3 = 3 because 3 *3 = 9

or 9-3 =6 than subtract 6 again by three ( 6-3= 3) than subtract 3 by three again ( 3-3=0) by counting the number of subtractions which is 3 we find that 3*3= 9 or 3+3+3 = 9 So that 9/3 is proven to equal 3. Do the math youself

Okay now to try to divided by 0? Do the division for yourself

10/0 =?

10-0= 10 try again 10 -0 =10 you never can bring 10 (in this case) down to value other than 10 no matter how time you subtracting it by zero . So the number of subtraction will become infinite

and the number of solution is infinte when multiplying by zero because any number time zero equal zero so that dividing by zero has a infinite number of soultion thus dividing by zero is a undefine operation. There was one expection to this when you divide 0 by 0 it equals 1. However this rule as change so it is now a undefined operation


The reason your calulator says Error when dividing by zero is because they program it to do that; any time it find something being divided by zero otherwise it would try to do what I explain
above and it would go to never-neverland in trying to solve it.

Answer 6

You can't divide by zero, because in division you have two numbers, what is being divide and what you are dividing by. I don't know the actual terms. Anyways there is nothing that zero can multiply with to give you another number. A number multiplied by zero is always zero.


ex. 3 divided by 0

The problem is asking you what multiplied by 0 gives you 3, and because everything multiplied by 0 gives you 0, you can never get 3 as the answer.

I hope I helped answer your question.

Answer 7

Don't listen to all the other chowderheads that don't know what they are responding to or don't know how to put it easily.

Let's try some examples of what happens when you divide by smaller and smaller numbers, getting closer and closer to dividing by zero.

1/1 = 1
1/0.1 = 10
1/0.01 = 100
1/0.001 = 1000
1/0.000000001 = 1000000000
You get the idea? The closer you get to dividing by zero, the much larger your answer gets. As x->0, 1/x -> infinity. But when x = 0, 1/x is undefined. No one has made a defition for infinity yet, and probably never will. This is why in math we do not permit division by zero.

Answer 8

Lots of good answers so take your pick. So simply, a proof (by contradiction)

Lets assume that you can get a finite answer when you divide by 0. Lets say a / 0 =b.

This implies explicitly that a = 0.b

All numbers multiplied by zero yield 0.

Therefore to get around this contradiction, division by zero is undefined and not a viable arithmetic process

q.e.d

This should not be confused with indeterminate forms ie 0/0 and the like

Answer 9

The reason that the result of a division by zero is undefined is the fact that any attempt at a definition leads to a contradiction. You end up with answers such as "1=2" or "0x0=1."

For example, let's try it with 1/0 = 0. Does 0 x 0 = 1? No! Or, if 1/0=1, does 1x0=1? No again! So there is no answer. It is a nonsensical operation. We call the answer "undefined" because we cannot define an answer that would work.

Answer 10

0 is not a factor of any number. It is always a multiple. You can divide 28 by 7 as 7 is a factor of 28. 28/7 = 4. 7, multiplied by 4, yields 28. But check this fraction out. 1/0! Which number, when multiplied with 0, yields 1? Or any other number for that matter? Multiplication by 0 always yields 0. So, any division which uses 0 as the divisor is undefined

Answer 11

When you divide 4 by 2 it becomes 2 because half of 4 is 2. See you are taking 4 or whatever number and dividing it into that many equal parts. You can't divide by 0 because how do you divide somthing into nothing?