135 - Srinivasa Ramanujan - division

The teacher was taking the arithmetic class on the black board. Three bananas were drawn.

The teacher asked the students, "If we have 3 bananas and 3 boys how many bananas will each boy get?"

A smart boy in front row replied, "Each will get one."

"Right," said the teacher. While the teacher was explaining the method of division, a boy sitting in one corner asked, "Sir, if no banana is distributed among no one, will everyone still get the banana?"

"What a silly question to ask!" said all the students with a roar of laughter.

The teacher, however , was very much impressed with the question and said, "There is nothing to laugh at about. I will explain what he means to say. He is asking if zero is divided by zero, will the result be one. The boy had asked a question that had taken mathematicians several centuries to answer."

source: Stories from Here and There, Ekalavya Education Foundation - By: Sunil Handa - http://www.eklavya.org/storyhere.html