I'll never laugh at Zeno again!

I always wondered how Zeno could not see the issue with his "Achilles and the Tortoise" paradox. I'll quote the paradox at the end.

Recent I was reading about how a rocket's efficiency increases with speed (strictly speaking velocity in a direction opposite that of the thrust). The article said "when the rocket is at rest the efficiency is zero and no energy is transferred to the rocket". My first thought was "well how does a rocket ever get started!". I can never laugh at Zeno again.

From Wikipedia

In the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with a tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 meters, for example. Suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed, one faster than the other. After some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 meters, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say 2 meters. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles arrives somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has some distance to go before he can even reach the tortoise.

#Maths #Math #Mathematics #Science #RocketScience #Infinitesimals #Zeno #paradox #funny