Once you and your colleagues get over the initial shock of this revolutionary idea, it isn't so difficult to go to the next step. Suppose we at a point where we had one yellow and one purple and wanted to share those equally among four people? Again, we can trade the yellow for four purples and distribute those four purples to the four people. But what about the leftover purple chip? Must that stay as a leftover, or is there a way to trade that in for something even lower? Now that the pattern has been established, it is much easier to see that, yes, four chips of another color(we'll use clear) can be exchanged for that one purple chip. Clear chips represent parts of a purple in the same way that purples represent parts of a yellow. And yes, there are other chips (orange) that represent parts of clear, and other chips that represent parts of the orange chips, and so on and so on! By establishing this repeated pattern of trading 1-for-4, we have created a system that can continue forever. Each succeeding chip color is a part of the chip color that came before it. Can you imagine the decreasing value of these chips? Each purple is worth one-fourth of a yellow, and each clear is worth one-fourth of a purple. This means that each clear is worth one-fourth of one-fourth (one- sixteenth ) of a yellow. Each succeeding color is worth a smaller and smaller portion of a yellow. Does this remind you of Sharon and her onion skin under the microscope?