Something from Nothing...Grandchildren, Counting and Zero

I have a pet peeve about nothing.  So I wonder…am I making something out of nothing?  NO!  I am making something out of SOMETHING!

 

When learning to count my grandchildren proudly recite:

1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10


Great…but where is zero?  Zero, this immensely important concept, acts as nothing more than a placeholder in the number ten.  The mathematical term "zero" is neither counted, nor accounted for, nor expressed in its proper place.


After all, when counting backwards from ten, we always reach zero triggering a rocket to blast-off!

 

So I encourage my grandchildren to count:

0…1…2…3…4…5…6…. 7…8…9

 

Zero---the boundary between the “real” and “abstract”.

Zero---the factor that changes something to nothing…5 X 0=0.

Zero---the gatekeeper of infinity…5/0=∞.

Zero---an important key to the calculus of the infinitesimal.

Zero---shunned by the Church for more then a millennia, its forced sabbatical resulting in the decay of mathematics, science and technology...a significant victim, perhaps partly a cause, of the Dark Ages.

Zero----a concept ironically easy and yet difficult to understand…a concept necessary to modern science, a concept that our children should be comfortable with and hopefully comprehend…a concept that needs to be a part of their earliest learning of numbers. 

From nothing comes a vast something…

So we all should count…

Zero…1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9