Dear Banjo,

Yes, this is more or less what I summarized in “If it is a material object then it is a molecule or atom, or some elementary particle etc, depending on what you call “smallest”, , except that I have never heard of molecules being called “infinitely small” (they have finite sizes that can be expressed as a fraction of cm) or “the final value before zero”.

.

Dear George,

.

"I have never heard of molecules being called “infinitely small” (they have finite sizes that can be expressed as a fraction of cm) or “the final value before zero”.
.

I have never heard of that before, either, George.

"Infinitely small" just seems to me to be the most appropriate term to describe the smallest possible quantity of something which exists. There is always smaller than very small, and even smaller than extremely small etc., but there is no smaller than infinitely small.

Also, "infinitely small" does not mean that something does not have physical dimensions, as in the case of a molecule or an atom or an elementary particle etc. which all " have finite sizes that can be expressed as a fraction of cm".

Anything "infinitely small" necessarily has physical dimensions, otherwise it would not exist.

Having said that, George, to be quite honest, I do not expect anybody from the scientific community to adopt my definition of "infinitely small" as the smallest quantity of something which exists.

That's life.

.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal

Cheers,

Tony

Dear Tony,

Reminds me of a Redditor's effort at describing quantum theory in words of four letters or less.

I think he/she did a fair job.

Big grav make hard kind of pull. Hard to know. All fall down. Why? But then some kind of pull easy to know. Zap-pull, nuke-pull, time-pull all be easy to know kind of pull. We can see how they pull real good! All seem real #cut# up. So many kind of pull to have!

But what if all kind of pull were just one kind of pull? When we look at real tiny guys, we can see that most big rule are no go. We need new rule to make it good! Just one kind of pull but in all new ways! In all kind of ways! This what make it tiny yard idea. Each kind of tiny guy have own move with each more kind of tiny guy. All guys here move so fast! No guys can move as fast! So then real, real tiny guys make this play of tiny guy to tiny guy. They make tiny guys move! When we see big guys get pull, we know its cuz tiny guys make tiny pull!

Dear Tony,

Your wikiedia article is only partly right.

And, I don’t think we can answer questions about quantum entanglement (which was the original context) if we folow this article, and use “infiniresimal” either as

(a) a 17th century understanding of a mathematical concepts or

(b) concepts whose only justification is that “students easily relate to them” altough no usuful and verifiable resilts can br obtained from them, or

(c) mathematical concepts belonging to non-standard analysis, that is not taught in undergraduate courses of pure mathematocs, only later.

.

Dear George,

.

To sum up that rather lengthy discussion, I think it is safe to say that we have aired most of our points of mutual incomprehension due, essentially, to your occasional recourse to mathematical language and competence in which, apart from the four basic operations of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, I am both totally illiterate and incompetent.

I wish to thank you for your patience, forbearance and kind indulgence.

Einstein has certainly left us an interesting legacy. His "spooky action at a distance" paradox will no doubt continue to animate lively discussion for quite some time, including on this forum.

.