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by thejteam 4534 days ago
A very informal proof:

Let X = 0.999… Then 10X = 9.999…

10X - X = 9.999… - 0.999… = 9 = 9X Therefore X = 1.

Being able to do the subtraction infinitely is a little hand-wavy, but should suffice as a demo for middle and high schoolers.

More formal proofs involve limits that one wouldn't normally encounter until a course in real analysis.

Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...