<div dir="auto">Off the top off my head. As long as the small square isn't of zero area the larger square isn't a square. When the smaller square reaches area zero there is only one square.<br><br>What do you think?<br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 5:59 PM cody dooderson <<a href="mailto:d00d3rs0n@gmail.com">d00d3rs0n@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>A kid momentarily convinced me of something that must be wrong today. </div><div>We were working on a math problem called Squareland (<a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1q3qr65tzau8lLGWKxWssXimrSdqwCQnovt0vgHhw7ro/edit#slide=id.p" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1q3qr65tzau8lLGWKxWssXimrSdqwCQnovt0vgHhw7ro/edit#slide=id.p</a>). It basically involved dividing big squares into smaller squares. </div><div>I volunteered to tell the kids the rules of the problem. I made a fairly strong argument for why a square can not be divided into 2 smaller squares, when a kid stumped me with a calculus argument. She drew a tiny square in the corner of a bigger one and said that "as the tiny square area approaches zero, the big outer square would become increasingly square-like and the smaller one would still be a square". </div><div>I had to admit that I did not know, and that the argument might hold water with more knowledgeable mathematicians. </div><div><br></div><div>The calculus trick of taking the limit of something as it gets infinitely small always seemed like magic to me. </div><div><br></div><div><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Cody Smith</div></div></div></div></div>
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