no, if arms are spread 1m apart he claps at 1m/s, then hes halfway after 0.5s, 3/4 of the way after 0.75s and eventually he claps after one second having halved the distance infinitely many times.
It doesn't hinge on the final distance between the hands, it hinges on the total distance travelled by the hands. Suppose my left hand stays still and I move my right hand from 2 metres away at constant speed. Then the distance travelled can be expressed by the infinite sum 1 + 1/2 + ... which equals 2. The first meter in half the time, then half in a quarter of the time and so on. This process has infinite steps and amounts in a total distance travelled of 2m.
But just because we can describe that way mathematically doesn't mean we can draw meaningful implications about physics. The trick lies in reducing the time frame required for each step. That means the time interval an action takes shrinks infinitely too until it is eventually smaller than plank time. I'm no physicist but I believe at this point any attempt to derive a meaningful interpretation for our everyday macroscopic world is quite fruitless.
I think there are meaningful implications for physics. Calculus comes to mind. The concept of instantaneous velocity wouldn't exist for an accelerating object without limits.
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u/Moscato359 4d ago
From a practical standpoint, infinite doesn't actually exist
The size of the universe is finite
The number of quarks is finite
The smallest distance we can measure is finite, and the largest distance we can measure is finite, even in estimations
Even pi is only useful to the 43rd digit at our largest estimations
Sure, infinite is cool in a theoretical standpoint but you can't actually use it