2012 Spring – MAT 1575 Calc II – Reitz

infinity is something which never ends. In life, there are many examples of infinity even-though we do not realize them many times. i learned about infinity when i was about 10 years old. my mother told me story about god and the creation of god which has no ending. as i used to run after the sky to catch it when it seemed like the sky is touching the ground. my mother told me that it is an illusion. no matter how much i run, i would never be able to catch the sky. she told me that it seems like its ends some place but its not. it’s goes to infinity, which never ends.

As a result i took a picture of the sky and in this picture it’s shows how the sky ends at the end of the ocean but as we know it’s never ends. later when i took calculus in college i learned deeper meaning of infinity that countless numbers become infinity which is actually not a number but a symbol.

Infinity can be defined as never ending. infinity can show a person that there is a reason to stop because you can never get to the end. the equation 1/x is infinity because it gets close and closer to zero but never reaches zero. This picture of the sky shows infinity because it never ends. The skies are the limit.

     To mathematicians and philosophers, infinity can be defined as a state of endlessness having no bounds; however if you were to ever ask a child what this concept means, what would they say? I remember the first time I heard the word infinity. I was 6 years old and was watching the movie Toy Story in which Buzz Lightyear exclaims his iconic catch phrase stated “To infinity and beyond”. At that age I thought of infinity as the part on space where Star Command (Lightyear’s home base) was located. Of course I know now that that is not what the character meant by his quote. With regards to the movie, infinity was used in the context pertaining to an infinite distance. Specifically, infinity and beyond was meant to illustrate Buzz Lightyear rocketing to the greatest heights ever imaginable and his determination to even surpass that distance.

     The concept of infinity is portrayed in many other mediums. Namely, Edwin Hubble’s theory of an expanding universe reflects the idea of infinity. He proposed that the universe in expanding at a constant rate by studying the movement of galaxies through their wavelengths of light. Hubble observed that the “red shift” of galaxies was directly proportional to the distance of the galaxy from Earth. A red shift deals with the light spectra associated with different galaxies. Namely, the galaxies light spectra were shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. In other words when a galaxy is moving away from Earth its wavelength of light is lengthened and depicts a red color. The faster the movement away, the redder the light.  On the other hand, if a galaxy was moving towards earth its wavelength would be shorter and a blue color. After plotting the motion against distancing of a galaxy he found that the velocity is proportion to the distance. Overall the universe was theorized to have begun at a single point and after the big bang it has been expanding ever since.

Infinity is something that never ends, something that lasts forever. I was first introduced to infinity when I was in elementary school and was learning how to count to 100. When I learned how count to 100 I thought to myself what is next? Soon after I learned that counting past 100 was a breeze so long as you could count to 100. Then as I got older I wondered if the numbers would ever end. I got my answer soon after, they didn’t. When I was younger my brother and I use to argue about who loved our mother more. We would say things like “I love mommy times 100” then the other would follow “I love mommy times 1000” and so on. Since my brother is older than I am he learned about infinity first so naturally he eventually said “I love mommy times infinity” I was stumped and lost that battle. My mom would have console me soon after he defeated me in the I love mom contest.

The picture I chose for this assignment was a clock. I chose a clock because time is infinite, in the sense that time never ends.

What is an infinity? Infinity is something that doesn’t have any limit. Infinity isn’t a real number in mathematics. It doesn’t have any end it goes on and on. It doesn’t matter if its on positive nor negative. I don’t know exactly when I came to know the definition of infinity.  However, when I go to the beach and see the waves of the ocean, I wonder that from where the waves start and where it ends. I realize that it is boundless, and it never ends. After taking calculus, I learned that the proper term to use for the boundless waves is infinity. Actually i was introduced to infinity by myself i guess because when i was child( around 5 years) i use to look at the sky i used to think that it has an ending somewhere. As I have grown up i got to know that it doesn’t have any ending. it made me more curious about the sky. why it doesn’t have any ending? it should.

I think it’s an important idea for my religion. Since I’m hindu i believe in reincarnation which goes on and on. people die and born again as something depends on their karma.