The role of the number zero in different contexts

The number zero represents an integer, that can be found between the number 1 and -1 on the number line. The number zero separates natural numbers and divides them into positive and negative integers. The Babylonians were allegedly the first to use the number zero; as far back as 300 BC they added zero to the abacus, a simple counting frame, by marking empty space with two wires. In the 5th Century, the mathematicians of India gave the number zero a numerical value and a regular fixed position on the number line. The number zero always played a special role in history, for it differs from any other number. Even today, it has a specific role - e.g. we always start counting with the number 1 and leave zero out. A similar example is the way we count time, as the calendar year zero was left out and we started with year 1. Because we were interested if the number of zero today is a student problem, we decided to examine this in the empirical part. In the practical part of this BA thesis we researched the role of the number zero in numerical operations as well as the comprehension of its positional value. The data was gathered via a written test taken by 10 randomly chosen pupils of the 5th grade of the Primary School. It has been established that the most mistakes occur when dividing by zero and when dividing in cases, where the zero occurs in the process of computation. When estimating the comprehension of the positional value of the number zero, the most mistakes occurred when estimating the result, where zero in record define the size of number, less at written record of the positional value of the number, that the record contains the number zero. Arithmetic operations of addition, substraction and multiplication aren't causing problems to students and they were, on everage, very successful