Article March 7, 1936 Issue

Adding Zero

[Written Especially for Children]

RUTH T. STAHL

JOAN is a dear little girl in the second grade in school. One day she saw among her problems on her arithmetic paper 8 + 0 = ? She puzzled over this for a while, for it seemed foolish to her, and she thought the teacher had made a mistake. But no—the teacher assured her that the problem was quite all right, and that she would have to think it out.

Joan tried everything she could think of. She knew 8 + 1 = 9, and she thought that adding zero should make some difference, so she tried 7, and even 80, but they were not right. Then the time for arithmetic was over, and Joan had not solved her problem.

But that evening her mother made it all plain. Joan saw that if she had eight pennies in one hand and none in the other, and put both together, she would still have eight pennies, no more and no less. She saw that adding zero to something could not change that something the least little bit.

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