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Subject Serious Math Question. Need a serious math nerd to help explain this to me. (Involves Calc)

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[quote:Anonymous Coward 17952489:MV8yMTk0MDgzXzM3MTMwODU4XzE3M0IwNTA=]
[quote:reversefiction:MV8yMTk0MDgzXzM3MTMwODI2X0E5OEEwQjkw]
[quote:Anonymous Coward 37573475:MV8yMTk0MDgzXzM3MTMwNzgxX0M2NUQzMTg0]
Suppose you try calculating a few logs and see what happens:

(here l is the natural log function)

l(1/1)
0
l(1/10)
-2.30258509299404568401
l(1/100)
-4.60517018598809136803
l(1/1000)
-6.90775527898213705205
l(1/10000)
-9.21034037197618273607
l(1/1000000)
-13.81551055796427410410
l(1/1000000000)
-20.72326583694641115616
l(1/1000000000000)
-27.63102111592854820821

you can see that the result of the natural log function gets smaller as n gets bigger. It sure looks like it might be approaching negative infinity, doesn't it?
[/quote]

Ahh, Thank you! My calculus teacher doesn't let us use a calculator on anything. So, I'm so used to going without. I think I've been doing homework for too long today. It might be beer thirty. :)
[/quote]

Shitty.  I wouldn't have made it through engineering school without my ti-89.  Don't ask me to do long division though...
[/quote]

Original Message All right, so I'm working through my calculus homework, and I encounter a problem such as lim n -> infinity of ln 1/n... The limit is 0. So, we get ln 0. Which is undefined. However my book tells me that the limit is negative infinity. How is that possible? Because if we convert the ln 0 back into an exponent we get. e^x = 0. And we all know that there is no solution for this problem. I'm curious how this works.

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