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Defiant63 t1_j6k64ah wrote

Think about what dividing means with a concrete example.

Let's say you have 4 apples and want to divide those into 2 piles. So that's 4 divided by 2. You get 2 piles of 2 apples each right?

Great. Now take that same pile of 4 apples and divide it into zero piles. You can't do it, can you? No matter what you do, you're left with some number of piles of apples. Short of making the apples cease to exist, you can't divide them into zero piles, hence you can't divide by zero.

It gets more complicated to use the apple example when you get into negative numbers and such, but this is a straight-forward example for ELI5.

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_Mapache_ t1_j6k72d9 wrote

You can also think of it in reverse. 2x2=4. You have a pile of two apples twice, which makes four apples. How many piles of zero apples would you need to get four apples?

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