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)
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Famous quotes containing the words large, numbers, everyday and/or world:
“All sailors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as high as any of them, and looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, rapped him on the nose and sent him below. Such is human justice!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)