Saturday, February 18, 2012

Trivia

If you want to move from A to B, you must first move half the distance from A to B. Then you must travel half the remaining distance. Then half of that, and so on, doing infinitely many moves. So, assuming you are moving at a constant speed, how is it possible to ever get anywhere?

Because each move takes proportionally less time. This is known as Zeno's Paradox after Zeno of Elea, a fifth century BC philosopher who proposed many paradoxes on the subject of infinity. Fortunately, this particular one can be refuted, otherwise nothing would ever get done!

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