History of zero

Hi little buddy, have you ever heard of the number zero? It's a very special number that means nothing, or the absence of something. Today we're going to learn about the history of how people first began using zero.

To understand this, let's go back to ancient times when people used numbers to count different things like animals, food, and money. At first, people didn't really need the concept of zero because they would just skip it and start counting from one.

But as time went on, people needed a way to represent that there was nothing there. For example, if you had no apples, how many apples did you have? Zero!

The first evidence of the use of zero was found in India around 400 AD. The Indian mathematicians played a significant role in the development of the concept of zero. They called it "sunya" which means "void" or "empty".

However, the use of zero didn't spread widely until it was introduced to the Arab world in the 9th century. The Arab mathematicians expanded upon the Indian concept of zero and refined it to include negative and decimal numbers.

From there, zero gradually became more widely accepted and used by mathematicians all around the world. It became an essential tool in fields like algebra, calculus, and physics.

So there you have it. Zero is a very important number that means nothing, and it was first used in India around 400 AD before spreading to the Arab world and eventually becoming an essential part of math and science as we know it today.