Duotrigintillion

This is a picture of Nathaniel dressed as a ketchup bottle.  No, it's not Halloween.  No, he's not going to a costume party.  A friend brought over a box of stuff they were getting rid of and it was in there.  He put it on and wore it for the rest of the morning.  And today.

Nathaniel is a genius.  They spent about 6 weeks at the beginning of the school year testing him to see if he needed to be in an accelerated math group.  Every day he had the tests I would ask him after school how things went.  His response was always the same.  "Fine.  I knew all the answers."  Todd and I would smile at one another in that oh isn't he so cute thinking he knows everything when he really doesn't kind of way.  And then we saw all the test results.  It turns out that he really did know all the answers to all the questions.  So, they skipped him ahead a grade.  It would have been ahead two grades, but he hadn't yet learned long division, or any division for that matter, and they thought that socially two grades might be too much.

Last night at dinner there was a discussion about the biggest number.  Googol was being thrown around by Caleb.  Benjamin said Infinity.  Nathaniel said Duotrigintillion.  Todd and I smiled that smile again and then said, "but that's not even a real number, Nathaniel!"  Nathaniel assured us that indeed it was because his friend Jacob had seen it in a book in the EPP teacher's room.  So, Todd whipped out his smart phone.  (how did we ever solve family disputes at the dinner table before smart phones??)

And it totally is a number.  Nathaniel even corrected Todd's spelling before Google could.

When will we ever learn?

By the way, Googol is 1 with 100 zeros after it.  Duotrigintillion is 1 with 99 zeros following.  I think, though, that Benjamin's answer was best.   How do you argue with a quantity with no end?

Although, I'm sure that in a few years, Nathaniel will figure out an argument.