Wednesday, April 6, 2011

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.  

4 comments:

Unknown said...

When I was that age.. I NEVER knew past the denomination of one million. And he is right and wrong..Who said Googol was the largest. I am here to report that Googol is the 32nd denomination that has an official name. There is 100 officially named denominations.. but as for the largest number..that goes to googolplex.. which is a googol of a googol og zeros...in other words, 10, duotrigintillion of zeros with a one at the start... give this address to your boy and spread the word.. this will show you all the names for all 100 known and official denominations ..I am trying to now find out how many denominations in a googolplx.. it hard to find a simple answer on the net.. cheak this out : http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/numbers_names.php and my name is Rowen Rogers... I am not anonymous...

Unknown said...

When I was that age.. I NEVER knew past the denomination of one million. And he is right and wrong..Who said Googol was the largest. I am here to report that Googol is the 32nd denomination that has an official name. There is 100 officially named denominations.. but as for the largest number..that goes to googolplex.. which is a googol of a googol og zeros...in other words, 10, duotrigintillion of zeros with a one at the start... give this address to your boy and spread the word.. this will show you all the names for all 100 known and official denominations ..I am trying to now find out how many denominations in a googolplx.. it hard to find a simple answer on the net.. cheak this out : http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/numbers_names.php and my name is Rowen Rogers... I am not anonymous...

Unknown said...

You will NOT believe this... I just found more names for well OVER 100 official denominations .... it is my duty to publish this.. I am unwittingly making the number googol look like extremely tiny.. well, everything is relative to another.. if you want to look smart or foolish.. because you now know more denominations than any other on this earth.. I give you the mother load..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers#Extensions_of_the_standard_dictionary_numbers my name is Rowen rogers

Unknown said...

You will NOT believe this... I just found more names for well OVER 100 official denominations .... it is my duty to publish this.. I am unwittingly making the number googol look like extremely tiny.. well, everything is relative to another.. if you want to look smart or foolish.. because you now know more denominations than any other on this earth.. I give you the mother load..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers#Extensions_of_the_standard_dictionary_numbers my name is Rowen rogers