Ask Me Everything3

Without numbers, we wouldn’t know how big something is, the temperaturę, or the datę or time. There would be no speed limits on roads, but there would be no cars or roads, either, because numbers are essential in order to make them.

Why are numbers so useful?

03 ■ Count 15 on

your left eye, 16 on your left ear, 17 on the left side of your neck, and 18 on your left shoulder.

How to: count to 27 in Papua New Guinea

Start with your right thumb and count from 1 to 5 on your fingers. Count 6 on your wrist, 7 on your forearm, and 8 on your elbow.

02,

Count 9 on your upper arm, 10 on your shoulder,

11    on your neck. Then count

12    on your ear, 13 on your right eye, and 14 on your nose.

We sometimes use our fingers to count, but some people on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea count with many other parts of their body as well.

12

The number of people who have walked on the Moon

50,000

The average number of bees in a hive

1 million+

The number of insect species

620 million

The number of cars in the world

6.8 billion

The number of people in the world

What is a    -

A googol \s a ^9 ^    _zeros

lt is 1 foliowed by _hemati_Ctan (see belo\N)-When . _nqtothink

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001

Why is zero so important?

O Zero is important for two reasons. First, zero is a number. Second, it lets us tell the difference between numbers like 11, 101, and 1001.

O In our counting system, the position of a number matters. From right to left, the positions are ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.

O The zeros in 1,001 show that there are no tens and no hundreds, so the number is one thousand and one.

Seven mathematicians

Pythagoras    Archimedes

(c. 570-495 bce)    (c. 287-212 bce)

Johannes Kepler

(1571-1630)

Y Developed \ Pythagoras’ Theorem and advocated the notion that Earth was spherical rather than fiat.

i>^rDiscoveredArchimedes’ ^ Principle—an object in water experiences an upward force eąual to the weight k of water that it displaces. _A

Discovered the laws of planetary motion.