"Think of it this way. Say you have 10 pizzas. You want them in groups of 5. How many groups would you get with these given parameters?"
The answer is, of course, 2. Mathematically, this is often understood as: 10/5 = 2.
"Same thing with fractions. Say you have one whole pizza. You want them in groups of 1/2. How many groups of 1/2 would you get out of one whole pizza?"
There are two halves in a whole, so the answer is 2. Mathematically, one divided by 1/2 is 2.
"Now, apply the same idea to 1/2 divided by 1/2. Say you have 1/2 of a whole pizza. You want them in groups of 1/2. How many groups would you get?"
It seems like a silly question. It's 1. Mathematically, 1/2 divided by 1/2 does equal 1.
Taking the same idea: How do you explain 1/2 divided by 1/4?
If you have 1/2 of a whole pizza, and you want them in groups of 1/4. How many groups would you get?
There are two 1/4s in a half, so the answer would be two. Mathematically, if you take 1/2, flip the 1/4 and multiply, we get 2.
...so, what Taeko was doing in the movie was actually dividing a whole number instead of a fraction. That is why the apple she was cutting up got smaller and smaller.
It's strange how mathematics works on paper, but difficult to see in the physical world. Kind of like Zeno's paradox, where Achilles races with a tortoise, but Achilles who is obviously faster could never outrun the slowpoke tortoise.
I told my friend this, and he went off on a tangent about the String Theory, Planck's constant, space, 11th dimensions, and other things my simple mind never thought (or wanted) to think about.
Friday, March 4, 2005
12:00 a.m.
Reading other people's blogs makes me feel like a voyeur (...well, I guess I am). Especially when they're about someone you kind of know.
