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Template:Two other uses A googol is the large number 10, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The term was coined in 1938 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1929–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

Other names for googol include ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.

A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Edward Kasner used it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.

In popular culture

• Googol was the correct answer to the million-pound question: "A number one followed by 100 zeros is known by what name?" on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when Major Charles Ingram attempted to defraud the quiz show on 10 September 2001. The other options were a megatron, a gigabit or a nanomole.
• Googol is one of the 336 vocabulary words in the board game Balderdash, and their definition on the back of the card is "The number one followed by 100 zeros."
• In the January 23, 1963, Peanuts strip, Lucy asks Schroeder what the chances are of them getting married, and Schroeder responds "Oh, I'd say about 'googol' to one."
• In an episode of the animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward, the "Gaminator" video games system is said to have a "3-googolhertz processor."
• "A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number one." — Carl Sagan, Cosmos
• The company name Google is a misspelling of the word "Googol" made by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as described in the book The Google Story by David A. Vise.
• Googol was a question in the 1995 film, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, when the two colleges were answering against each other. "What is a googol?" was the question. Norwood Gills answered with "One, followed by a hundred zeros".
• In Back to the Future III, Emmett Brown states that the woman he loves, Clara, is "One in a googolplex".
• In Steve Martin's comedy album Comedy Is Not Pretty!, Martin talks about buying a googolphonic stereo system (which he erroneously describes as having "the highest number of speakers before infinity...") after not being satisfied with his stereophonic, quadraphonic, then dodecaphonic systems.
• In an episode of Samurai Jack, "Jack versus Mad Jack", the shape-shifting master of darkness Aku puts a price on the noble samurai's head of 2 googolplex.
• A March 1976 comic book issue of Richie Rich (Vaults of Mystery #9) introduced a villain named "The Googol".
• In 2002, the band Clutch released their album Live At The Googolplex.
• In The Simpsons, the large cinema in Springfield is known as the "Googolplex".
  • "Googolplex" is also the name of the cinema in "Rocko's Modern Life" and the mall in Phineas and Ferb
• On Phineas & Ferb, Danville's main shopping center is the Googolplex Mall.
• In The Sopranos Season 5 Episode 56 - All Happy Families... AJ is being tutored in mathematics when asked - "Okay, if a million zeroes can be written on the front and back of a sheet of paper, how many sheets of paper do you need for a GOOGOL of zeroes?"
• In the 1985's TV series The Small Wonder, the lead character, Vicki, describes googol as "A chain of numbers starting by one followed by a hundred zeros."
• In Loonatics Unleashed, in the episode The Comet Cometh, Rev Runner explains what a googol is.

See also

• Google
• Googolplex
• Large numbers
• Names of large numbers

References

1. Kasner, Edward and Luis Correa, Mathematics and the Imagination, 1940, Simon and Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-486-41703-4
2. Millionaire's route to the top prize
3. Brin, S. and Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7):107–117

External links

• Weisstein, Eric W. "Googol". MathWorld.
• googol at PlanetMath.

• Large integers
• Integers