ANNALS OF KID SCIENCE
overheard, small sister (7?) and brother (8?) sitting together on a bus
(the brother is the older one)
b: there IS no largest number!
s: yes there is!*
b: there could be a number that started at the beginning of this bus and went all the way to the back**!!
s: HOW!!??
[generally inaudible, though some of it involves the brother’s disparagement of the sister’s maths teacher’s method, qualifications and intelligence, all of which are hotly defended]
s: (…) like 12 divided by 100!
b (triumphant and gleeful): you can’t DIVIDE 12 by a 100 hahahaha (etc)
*i tend to side with the sister here: assuming the universe is geometrically closed, and that there is a lower-limit granularity to the size of objects, then there is an upper limit to the number of possible “things”, and thus an upper limit to the number of possible relationships between those things… there will thus be numbers which are just too big to have a use, hence since use = value, there are values which don’t exist (this is not a proof so much as an indication obviously)
**we are on No.73 ie a v. long bendybus – so there was potential for the discussion to invoke the very curvature of space which allows for the possibility of geometrical closure!! ie what if the bendy bus was so bendy that its back curled round to touch its front??