Free writing - Divide and Zero

Divide

When thinking about the word “divide” the first thing that comes to my head is division. I think about splitting things up, as in dividing a PE class into four teams. I’m sure the word divide can be taken into many contexts and now that I think about I’m sure that a form of the word divide is used in everyday of my life. Our classes at UBC are sometimes divided into two or three classes throughout the week. My day is divided in many ways as well, there is the time I spent at home and the time I spend at school, the time I spend travelling between the two, all of those aspects divide up parts of my day. Thus far the way I have talked about the word divide has been a view in which something is taken and split up into smaller pieces, but what about when in school we divide by a number smaller than one we get a larger number.

Zero

When I first think of zero the number zero is what pops into my head. Then I start to think what value does zero have, does zero mean nothing? Why is zero not the freezing point in Fahrenheit degrees with respect to temperature yet it is when using degrees Celsius. Zero is what is used as an initial value in most sports, games typically start with score 0-0. But why zero, and why is it called zero. My whole life I have learned that zero is essentially zero. There has been no explanation really as to what zero is and what zero means. Zero could possibly be seen as the most important number, because it acts as the starting value for so many situations.