If you come from the opposite direction, though, like 1.00001, you get 1.00001 being raised to a very large exponent, and so the number is getting BIGGER. You would then be approaching infinity.

The problem with taking the derivative is, you will always end up with a zero in the denominator… Meaning always an infinite exponent. And taking the derivative would mean that now you are also multiplying the whole thing by 2/0 (which itself approaches infinity).

So, really it’s not a cut-and-dried answer, but now you can imagine you approach zero from one direction, and infinity from the other — would look something like the graph of the tangent function at 90 degrees!

Hope that helps!