Just wait until they learn that computers subtract by adding, and multiply by adding, and divide by adding, and do exponents by adding, and do logarithms by adding.
it multiplies by using a complex set of gate arrays that do some adding, otherwise hardware multipliers are like multiplier tables built up by logic gates. Early CPUs did multiplication by adding (essentially multiplications are just recursively adding the same numbers to themselves), and if you were lucky it was optimized to use bit-shifts.
Division is a lot more complicated though. I did some optimization by multiplying with reciprocals instead, but speed gain was negligible due to memory bandwith limitations.
The problem is just that its missing the units. The mass is divided, and the number of cells goes up, but the total mass of both cells stays about the same at the time of division(or maybe some of it is converted to energy that is lost from the cells to thier environment, so probably goes down), and is split between each cell.
All the people trying to explain why division and multiplication are the same and dividing by fractions bla bla bla…
But it’s missing the point that a cell dividing is nothing like algebraic division so the analogy just doesn’t make sense.
Saying its “dividing in half” so its actually “x/0.5 = 2x” doesn’t make any sense because the phrase “divide in half” in every other context means “x/2”…
Any ways if you want to model a cell dividing you should use an exponential
Dont be too hard on them. They are convinced that buying 12 2/4 melons in a train that started in new York at 8:15 going west and dividing 45 apples in another train that started at 10:45 in San Francisco going North are completely normal activities.
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