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Revision as of 15:40, 24 June 2011
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 chess game moves possible hypothetically. 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.
- 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.
See also
References
- Kasner, Edward and Newman,James R., Mathematics and the Imagination, 1940, Simon and Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-486-41703-4
- Millionaire's route to the top prize
- 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