could you cut that tiny piece of noodle in half forever?" Uma's own attempt at imagining infinity begins with something she'd like to do forever-have recess-and ends with the vague worry that eternal recess might be a paradox: "If there's no school before recess, and no school after recess, is it really recess anymore?" Uma admits that these thoughts make her head hurt, and her pleasure at having Grandma notice and compliment her new red shoes brings her (and audiences') musings back down to stable, solid, comforting Earth. For the school cook, it's endless divisibility: "In your mind. For Uma's friend Samantha, it's a racetrack you can drive around forever. For Grandma, infinity is a family extending limitless generations into the future. The next day she asks classmates, relatives, and acquaintances how they would express their understanding of infinity, and their range of answers, from sensible to poetic, provides the child-and readers of any age-a way to master the idea. But for the little girl Uma, pondering the deep night sky (during a bout of sleeplessness brought on by the excitement of a new pair of red shoes), the concept of infinity is elusive, intimidating, and even a little bit scary. So innocuous-looking a symbol, that recumbent numeral eight.
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