To: Red Badger
Like dividing by ‘0’, you can ‘approach’ it but never arrive there.............. Reminds me of a similar example my high school science teacher used of standing a distance from the wall and then stepping half the distance toward the wall, and then half that distance, and so on and so on…., but never reaching the wall. I knew it made logical and mathematical sense but it was (and still is) unintuitive mind blowing. Of course, at some point you would be talking about step distances that were smaller than subatomic particles (and continuing to get even smaller), so that thought exercise would test the bounds of other theories eventually.
18 posted on
12/20/2024 1:29:59 PM PST by
noiseman
(The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.)
To: noiseman
You can’t get closer than the Planck distance, right? Convince me I’m wrong. Don’t actually attempt a closer approach or you might inadvertantly create a black hole.
44 posted on
12/20/2024 2:56:34 PM PST by
steve86
(Numquam accusatus, numquam ad curiam ibit, numquam ad carcerem™)
To: noiseman
"Reminds me of a similar example my high school science teacher used of standing a distance from the wall and then stepping half the distance toward the wall, and then half that distance, and so on and so on…., but never reaching the wall."
And that reminds me of this: A mathematician, a philosopher, and an engineer were having a drink together and the engineer asked "If you were standing 16 feet from a table that had a bottle of wine on it, and you were to walk halfway to the table, and then halfway again, and so on, how many times would you have to walk halfway before you reached the bottle of wine?
The mathematician said "You would never reach it because the distance to the table would always be non zero."
The philosopher said "In that case does the bottle of wine really exist or is it just a figment of your imagination?"
The engineer set a bottle of wine on a table and walked 16 feet from the table. He then walked 8 feet towards the table, then 4 feet, then two feet, then one foot, and reached out and picked up the bottle of wine and said "Four times."
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