The Number Zero By zee oddo

Historical Facts About the Number Zero The creator of the number zero was a Indian mathematician named Aryabhatta. The first city in Italy to use the number zero was Pisa. The man who brought the number zero to Europe named Leonardo Fibonacci When the number zero first reached Europe the people who lived there were afraid to use the number. Leonardo Fibonacci brought the number zero to Europe in the 12th century.

The Greeks Thoughts About the Number Zero The Greeks thought that the number zero should not have been created. It did not make sense to them that a number that stands for nothing should equal something. They did not use the number zero in their number system. See the diagram below. Since the Greeks did not have the number zero in their own number system, it was harder to write big numbers. What the Greeks did not understand about the number zero, is that it is not only a number but also a place holder used to make writing big numbers easier.

All About the Person Who Created Zero He was born 476 AD and died 550 AD. His name was Aryabhatta and he lived in India. He did not use a symbol for the number zero. He wrote several books, but most were lost. One of his books that has been preserved is called “Aryabhatiya”. It has 108 verses and 13 introductory verses. He also worked on the approximation of pi. Here is one of his quotes about his discoveries that I got from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata: "Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000 can be approached."

Introduction of Zero to Europe The man who brought the number zero to Europe name was Leonardo Fibonacci. He brought the number zero to Europe during the 12th century. Leonardo Fibonacci translated the Persian number system from Arabic to English, thus introducing the number system to Europe. He said "The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 ... any number may be written." I got this quote from: http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/interest/zero.htm

How Zero Affected Math Zero is a big part of math, because without zero we would have no place holders for big numbers and we would not have a center between positive and negative numbers. Zero is widely used in adding and subtracting, but if zero is added or subtracted to any number, it is like add or subtracting nothing. If you multiply a number by zero, then the answer is always going to be zero. So with multiplication zero is useful. A place holder is a number that signifies there is no value in the tens, hundreds, thousands, etc………. Without a place holder , writing numbers that are big would be very difficult and that is why zero (which is a place holder) is important to math. It also mathematical functions easier to note. l

Conclusion In this slide you have learned about: the historical facts zero the Greeks beliefs about zero the person who created zero the spread of zero through Europe how zero affects math. I hope that you understand these things and try and learn more about them.