Strange Math: Unlimited
by Lu King Yuen from 4D
Infinity is very strange. Infinity isn’t a number. Infinity is the end of the number and the beginning of the number. There isn't an end to the number of such things, so…well…infinity is a very enormous thing. And infinity is a very big number that changes every time. Therefore, infinity +/-/×/÷ infinity = infinity.
For example, there is a monkey that will type infinitely. If the monkey doesn't eat, drink, or sleep and its life is infinite, infinite hours later he will finish typing the complete works of Shakespeare. Also, if there are infinite monkeys, when they type the first word in order, they will finish typing the complete works of Shakespeare. This is why infinity is an enormous number.
In another example, a customer went to a normal hotel. And that hotel is full; therefore, he cannot stay. Then he went to a hotel that has infinity rooms, but it is also full. What? You say that is impossible. Oh! The hotel is full because there are infinitely many people there. But if all the customers went to the room besides them, then the new customer would have a room. This is why infinity always changes.
Why do I know about infinity? Because I like math! Math isn’t only solving maths questions and finding the answer. Maths is a thing that appears every day in your life. Everything you see in your life is made of math. Math isn’t a subject; it is the most important thing in the world. For instance, the keyboard I am using to type this article uses maths when it was made, and the computer uses maths because it has coding, so many things are made of maths! Maybe you won’t meet infinity now in life, but I hope you like math too.
BY THE WAY
1. Do you know who invented the infinity symbol first?
ANS: John Wallis (1616-1703) is the English mathematician who invented the infinity symbol in 1655. And the infinity symbol (♾️) looks like a Möbius strip, and the Möbius strip has a power like infinity, but the infinity symbol did not copy the Möbius strip because the Möbius strip was discovered by Möbius, the mathematician, in 1858.
2. Do you know who discovered infinity first?
Anaximander (c. 610 – c. 546 BCE) first found infinity. But this thing happened a million years ago, so you can also say Georg Cantor (1845–1918) is the mathematician who first found infinity.
3. Why did mathematicians need to discover infinity?
They needed to discover infinity because they needed a tool to solve practical problems that regular numbers could not handle. It was not discovered like an island but invented as a mental framework to explain the universe.