title: Trying to find smallest number
body: <p>In my program I'm trying to find the smallest number that python can give me. When I kept dividing a number by 2, I got 5 x 10^-324 (5e-324). I thought I could divide this by the biggest number I can use in python. I tried to get the biggest number in python by doing this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>z = 1
      while True:
          try:
              z = z+1
          except OverflowError:
              z = z-1
              break
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Here is my full code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from os import system
  x = 76556758478567587
  while True:
      x = x/2
      if x/2 == 0.0:
          break
  
  print("Smallest number I can compute:", x)
  print()
  z = 1
  while True:
      try:
          z = z+1
      except OverflowError:
          z = z-1
          break
  
  print(str(x) + " divided by " + str(z) + " is...")
  z = x/z
  print(z)
  system("pause &gt;nul")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Every time I run this it does nothing. I suddenly recognize it's still trying to solve the problem so I open task manager and Python was eating up my CPU like a pack of wolves eating a dead cow.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I know the smallest number in python would be negative but I want to get the the smallest number <strong>above zero</strong>.</p>