Large Numbers in The Everyday World
Examples of large numbers describing everyday real-world objects are:
- The number of bits on a computer hard disk (as of 2010, typically about 1013, 500-1000 GB)
- The estimated number of atoms in the observable Universe (1080)
- The number of cells in the human body (more than 1014)
- The number of neuronal connections in the human brain (estimated at 1014)
- The Avogadro constant, the number of "elementary entities" (usually atoms or molecules) in one mole; the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12; (approximately 6.022 × 1023 per mole)
Read more about this topic: Large Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words large, numbers, everyday and/or world:
“A tattered copy of Johnson’s large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to “make up” verses.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“Green grow the rushes-O
What is your one-O?”
—Unknown. Carol of the Numbers (l. 2–3)
“A really tight friendship is when you start to really care about the person. If he gets sick, you kind of start worrying about him—or if he gets hit by a car. An everyday friend, you say, I know that kid, he’s all right, and you don’t really think much of him. But a close friend you worry about more than yourself. Well, maybe not more, but about the same.”
—Anonymous Fifteen-Year-Old Boy. As quoted in Children’s Friendships by Zick Rubin, ch. 3 (1980)
“That the world can be improved and yet must be celebrated as it is are contradictions. The beginning of maturity may be the recognition that both are true.”
—William Stott (b. 1940)