Here’s something your matric maths teacher most likely didn’t touch on: what do you get when you add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6… all the way to infinity?
Go on, hazard a guess. Unless you’re a physics student or professor, in which case you’ll already know the answer. The answer which, by the way, we’re not going to give away here, because this is required viewing.
All you need is a basic understanding of arithmetic – basically, grade one maths – and you’ll easily grasp the concepts being explained here, by a bona fide physics professor from the University of Nottingham. If you want to do a bit more reading on it afterwards, look up the work of famous mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler, and Riemann Zeta functions.
As the professor in the video says, this isn’t just some mathematical hocus pocus. Scientists see the answer all the time in their real world work.
Disclaimer: It’s been a number of years since many in the htxt.africa team have actually done matric mathematics. So if this has actually featured, educate us in the comments.
