Infinity is a difficult concept to comprehend, but a new documentary streaming on Netflix called “A Trip to Infinity” may help shed some light on the subject. What is infinity? We get our first sense of it when we are children. I remember asking what the largest number was. Guessing something only with an adult adding one to get something bigger. Or the times when I upped my parents by telling them I loved them times a million. Infinity is hard to comprehend at such a young age. It still amazes me that you can create every number in existence with just ten digits. This infinity documentary will open our eyes to the realities of mathematics, physics, and the universe.
Infinity in High School and College
I didn’t think much about infinity until I took AP Calculus and learned about limits. That’s when infinity becomes a very important concept to comprehend. I still struggle with the convergence and divergence of infinite series. It doesn’t seem like something that goes on for infinity should ever reach a value. It’s like magic when it occurs.
Then I started studying undergraduate mathematics. Then my brain breaks. Because you learn that some infinities are larger than others! That the real numbers are uncountable. This means that there are real numbers that exist which have not been discovered or ever spoken. I stumbled on this article discussing a new proof about the cardinality of Real numbers. Can’t say that I understand it but it is interesting nonetheless.
Infinity Documentary on Netflix
The truth is, the more you learn about infinities the stranger things become. That is why I’m excited about this new infinity documentary. “A Trip to Infinity” streaming on Netflix starting today.
After it airs, I’ll update this article with my thoughts. Most likely, it will remind us how small and insignificant humans are in the universe. Which makes us pretty amazing!
Infinity Documentary Review
“In “A Trip to Infinity”, the Netflix documentary does a great job of simplifying the topic of infinity for a general audience. I noticed They left out a lot of things that I learned as an undergraduate. The cool thing was that there were easter eggs for us that knew a little more about infinity.
I learned something new from the documentary. That you don’t compare sets by their size. Both natural numbers and rationals are infinite. It seems like there should be more rational numbers though. But how do we know they are the same size? We can pair each natural number with a rational number without having any leftovers.
Here is proof:
I don’t know why this was more clear to me through the professor’s explanation. I tend to focus on numbers when I see them. I remember not understanding grouping in multiplication. Having to count out objects to prove to myself that five groups of five equal twenty-five.
Counting like this isn’t difficult when working with a finite set. I can write out the matching pairs and see that they are the same. But you can’t count each member of an infinite set. I got a little lost in understanding the proof. Accepting what my teacher said was true.
When mathematicians talk about their experiences with mathematics more people can relate. So we need a lot of different perspectives and a diversity of people willing to share their stories. There is something for everybody in mathematics if they are willing to explore it. This infinity documentary makes that clear.