January 28, 2009

Big Numbers

Inspired by one of Bart's links, I put the site's list of big numbers into an Excel form and then made an image out of it (Google Docs wouldn't display the really big ones the way I wanted).

To make the most sense of a number's name, take the exponent, divide it by three, and subtract one.

So Nonillion, or 10^30, comes from [(30/3)-1]=9, and is equal to one thousand plus 9 triplets of zeroes. Sexvigintillion, besides being the dirtiest sounding number in existence, 10^81, or one thousand plus 26 triplets of zeroes ("sex" meaning six and "vigint" meaning twenty?)

Finally, just in case you didn't know this, note that 10^100 (the only exponent on the list besides 1 and 2 that isn't divisible by 3) is called a "googol." And no, it doesn't seem that dictionaries are yet taking the spelling "google," an issue which arose in a game of Boggle I played with Desiree.

1 comment:

  1. I have no witty comment, but I really enjoy looking at that list of numbers.

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