ELI5 : Trying to understand how how something that tends to infinity doesn’t actually reach what it’s tending to
howdy, dumb university student here, never been too good at math but my course requires me to take a compulsory module. It’s not required for me to know this but itll at least help calm my confusion.
We know that asymptotes are points on the cartesian plain that the graph/function will never touch. We are told that it ‘infinitely’ tends to the asymptote but never reaches it. My question is that if it actually infinitely tends to something, shouldn’t it eventually reach it?
I think i might be making some sort of logical error, but the best (i think) ive seen it described is if you’re 5m away from a wall and your distance halves each time you never ‘actually’ reach zero, just a number close to zero. I guess that makes sense, but i want a second (or several) opinion/s.
please don’t berate me :,)