Zeno's stadium paradox

[Iowa]

Another thread reminded me of this.....I'm sure most of you have heard this, but just in case you forgot...

It is impossible to traverse a stadium because before you cover the whole stadium, you must cover the half; and before you cover the half, you must cover the quarter; before the quarter, the eighth; etc. etc. to infinity. Therefore, to traverse a stadium is to traverse an infinite number of halves in a finite time. The same argument may be applied to any spatial interval.

Another way to look at it is this.

say im in a square room with my back against a wall and I want to get to the wall on the other side of the room. First, I half to walk half way there, then half way again from that point, then half way from that point...So I will never get to the other wall. Things that make you go hmmmm......

[symatech]

well he knew little about calculus it seems. as he approaches more half of halfs etc. the time it takes him to traverse that half goes to zero. of course, i think calc came a little after his time...but i dunno for sure

[Iowa]

well he knew little about calculus it seems. as he approaches more half of halfs etc. the time it takes him to traverse that half goes to zero. of course, i think calc came a little after his time...but i dunno for sure

I agree with you bro, his "paradox" is flawed. This site has some good explainations. http://www.jimloy.com/physics/zeno.htm Just wanted to get people to think about it.

[Psychotron]

say im in a square room with my back against a wall and I want to get to the wall on the other side of the room.

you get there by walking to the wall.

i also dont see the point in this post. yea, you cant ever reach a destination if you always travel half the distance.

[symatech]

the point is straight forward. Logically, you would never reach the wall. by observation, you know that you do reach the wall. hence the paradox.

[chicamahomico]

This problem is a common sense fallacy and was proven so after the invention of Calculus.

[Psychotron]

the point is straight forward. Logically, you would never reach the wall. by observation, you know that you do reach the wall. hence the paradox.

theres no paradox, all he said was you can never reach a destination by traveling half the distsance each time, thats a fact.

[chicamahomico]

I'll reiterate. The key is the infinite number of iterations.

This problem is a common sense fallacy and was proven so after the invention of Calculus.

theres no paradox, all he said was you can never reach a destination by traveling half the distsance each time, thats a fact.

[MMC78]

This boils down to time intervals and convergent and divergent series:

The series
1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 .... converges at 2
whereas
1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 .... diverges to infinity

The first series represents the intervals travelled while crossing the stadium. Therefore we know he's traveling a finite distance. Assume he's traveling at a constant speed. Finite distance / constant speed = finite amount of time

No calculus needed (in the explanation).

[symatech]

but it doesnt answer the question. finite distance\constant speed perhaps equals a finite amount of time but it doesnt explain how he is able to cross the infinite number of halfs.