Many people are interested in questions about how large numbers are called and which number is the largest in the world. We will deal with these interesting questions in this article.
Story
Southern and Eastern Slavic peoples to write numbers, they used alphabetical numbering, and only those letters that are in the Greek alphabet. A special “titlo” icon was placed above the letter that denoted the number. The numerical values of the letters increased in the same order in which the letters followed in the Greek alphabet (in the Slavic alphabet, the order of the letters was slightly different). In Russia, Slavic numbering was preserved until the end of the 17th century, and under Peter I they switched to “Arabic numbering”, which we still use today.
The names of the numbers have changed too. So, until the 15th century, the number “twenty” was designated as “two ten” (two dozen), and then it was reduced for a faster pronunciation. Until the 15th century, the number 40 was called “fourty”, then it was supplanted by the word “forty”, originally denoting a bag containing 40 squirrel or sable skins. The name “million” appeared in Italy in 1500. It was formed by adding a magnifying suffix to the number millet (thousand). Later, this name came to the Russian language.
In the old (XVIII century) "Arithmetic" by Magnitsky, a table of the names of numbers is given, brought to "quadrillion" (10 ^ 24, according to the system after 6 digits). Perelman Ya.I. in the book "Entertaining arithmetic" the names of large numbers of that time are given, somewhat different from those of today: septillion (10 ^ 42), octalion (10 ^ 48), nonalion (10 ^ 54), decallion (10 ^ 60), endecalion (10 ^ 66), dodecalion (10 ^ 72) and it is written that "there are no further names."
Methods for constructing names of large numbers
There are 2 main ways of naming large numbers:
- American system which is used in the USA, Russia, France, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Brazil. The names of large numbers are built quite simply: first comes the Latin ordinal number, and the suffix “-million” is added to it at the end. Exceptions are the number “million”, which is the name of the number thousand (mille) and the augmentation suffix “-million”. The number of zeros in a number written in the American system can be found by the formula: 3x + 3, where x is a Latin ordinal
- English system most widespread in the world, it is used in Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal. The names of numbers according to this system are built as follows: the suffix “-million” is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is the same Latin numeral, but the suffix “-billion” is added. The number of zeros in the number, which is written in the English system and ends with the suffix “-million”, can be found by the formula: 6x + 3, where x is a Latin ordinal number. The number of zeros in numbers ending with the suffix “-billion” can be found by the formula: 6x + 6, where x is a Latin ordinal number.
Only the word billion passed from the English system to the Russian language, which is nevertheless more correct to call it as the Americans call it - billion (since the American system of naming numbers is used in Russian).
In addition to numbers that are written in the American or English system using Latin prefixes, off-system numbers are known that have their own names without Latin prefixes.
Proper names of large numbers
| Number | Latin numeral | Name | Practical value | |
| 10 1 | 10 | ten | Number of fingers on 2 hands | |
| 10 2 | 100 | one hundred | About half the number of all states on Earth | |
| 10 3 | 1000 | one thousand | Approximate number of days in 3 years | |
| 10 6 | 1000 000 | unus (I) | million | 5 times the number of drops per 10 liter. bucket of water |
| 10 9 | 1000 000 000 | duo (II) | billion (billion) | Approximate population of India |
| 10 12 | 1000 000 000 000 | tres (III) | trillion | |
| 10 15 | 1000 000 000 000 000 | quattor (IV) | quadrillion | 1/30 parsec length in meters |
| 10 18 | quinque (V) | quintillion | 1/18 of the number of grains from the legendary chess inventor award | |
| 10 21 | sex (VI) | sextillion | 1/6 the mass of planet Earth in tons | |
| 10 24 | septem (VII) | septillion | The number of molecules in 37.2 liters of air | |
| 10 27 | octo (VIII) | octillion | Half the mass of Jupiter in kilograms | |
| 10 30 | novem (IX) | quintillion | 1/5 of all microorganisms on the planet | |
| 10 33 | decem (X) | decillion | Half the mass of the Sun in grams | |
- Vigintillion (from Lat.viginti - twenty) - 10 63
- Centillion (from Lat.centum - one hundred) - 10 303
- Million (from Latin mille - thousand) - 10 3003
For numbers over a thousand, the Romans did not have their own names (all the names of numbers were further compound).
Compound names for large numbers
In addition to proper names, for numbers greater than 10 33, compound names can be obtained by combining prefixes.
Compound names for large numbers
| Number | Latin numeral | Name | Practical value |
| 10 36 | undecim (XI) | andecillion | |
| 10 39 | duodecim (XII) | duodecillion | |
| 10 42 | tredecim (XIII) | tredecillion | 1/100 of the number of air molecules on Earth |
| 10 45 | quattuordecim (XIV) | quattordecillion | |
| 10 48 | quindecim (XV) | quindecillion | |
| 10 51 | sedecim (XVI) | sexdecillion | |
| 10 54 | septendecim (XVII) | septemdecillion | |
| 10 57 | octodecillion | So many elementary particles in the sun | |
| 10 60 | novemdecillion | ||
| 10 63 | viginti (XX) | vigintillion | |
| 10 66 | unus et viginti (XXI) | anvigintillion | |
| 10 69 | duo et viginti (XXII) | duovigintillion | |
| 10 72 | tres et viginti (XXIII) | trevigintillion | |
| 10 75 | quattorvigintillion | ||
| 10 78 | quinvigintillion | ||
| 10 81 | sexvigintillion | So many elementary particles in the universe | |
| 10 84 | septemwigintillion | ||
| 10 87 | octovigintillion | ||
| 10 90 | novemvigintillion | ||
| 10 93 | triginta (XXX) | trigintillion | |
| 10 96 | antrigintillion |
- 10 123 - quadragintillion
- 10 153 - quinquagintillion
- 10 183 - sexagintillion
- 10 213 - septuagintillion
- 10 243 - octogintillion
- 10 273 - nonagintillion
- 10,303 - centillion
Further names can be obtained by direct or reverse order of Latin numerals (as it is not known correctly):
- 10 306 - antcentillion or centunillion
- 10 309 - duocentillion or centduollion
- 10 312 - trecentillion or centtrillion
- 10 315 - quattorcentillion or centquadrillion
- 10 402 - tretrigintacentillion or centtretrigintillion
The second spelling is more consistent with the construction of numbers in Latin and avoids ambiguities (for example, in the number trecentillion, which according to the first spelling is both 10 903 and 10 312).
- 10 603 - ducentillion
- 10 903 - trecentillion
- 10 1203 - quadringentillion
- 10 1503 - quingentillion
- 10 1803 - Sescentillion
- 10 2103 - septingentillion
- 10 2403 - octingentillion
- 10 2703 - nongentillion
- 10 3003 - million
- 10 6003 - duomillion
- 10 9003 - tremillion
- 10 15003 - quinquemillion
- 10 308760 -ion
- 10 3000003 - Million
- 10 6000003 - duomiliamilillion
Myriad- 10 000. The name is outdated and practically not used. However, the word “myriads” is widely used, which does not mean a certain number, but an innumerable, uncountable set of something.
Googol ( English . googol) — 10 100. This number was first written by the American mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938 in the journal Scripta Mathematica in the article “New Names in Mathematics”. According to him, his 9-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested the name so. This number became common knowledge thanks to the Google search engine named after him.
Asankheya(from Chinese asenci - uncountable) - 10 1 4 0. This number is found in the famous Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutra (100 BC). It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles required to attain nirvana.
Googolplex ( English . Googolplex) — 10 ^ 10 ^ 100. This number was also invented by Edward Kasner and his nephew, it means one with a googol of zeros.
Skuse's number (Skewes' number, Sk 1) means e to the e to the e to the 79th power, that is, e ^ e ^ e ^ 79. This number was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. Soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in the proof of the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. Later, Riel (te Riele, HJJ "On the Sign of the Difference P (x) -Li (x)." Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced the Skuse number to e ^ e ^ 27/4, which is approximately 8.185 10 ^ 370. However, this number is not an integer, so it is not included in the table of large numbers.
Skewes' second number (Sk2) is equal to 10 ^ 10 ^ 10 ^ 10 ^ 3, that is, 10 ^ 10 ^ 10 ^ 1000. This number was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote the number up to which the Riemann hypothesis is valid.
For very large numbers, it is inconvenient to use powers, so there are several ways to write numbers - notation by Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.
Hugo Steinhouse proposed to write large numbers inside geometric shapes (triangle, square and circle).
The mathematician Leo Moser refined Steinhouse's notation by suggesting that after the squares, draw pentagons instead of circles, then hexagons, etc. Moser also proposed a formal notation for these polygons so that numbers could be written down without drawing complex drawings.
Steinhouse came up with two new super-large numbers: Mega and Megiston. In Moser's notation, they are written as follows: Mega – 2, Megiston- 10. Leo Moser also proposed to call a polygon with the number of sides equal to mega - megagon, and also proposed the number “2 in Megagon” - 2. The last number is known as Moser's number or just like Moser.
There are numbers greater than Moser. The largest number used in mathematical proof is number Graham(Graham's number). It was first used in 1977 to prove one estimate in Ramsey's theory. This number is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed without a special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976. Donald Knuth (who wrote The Art of Programming and created the TeX editor) came up with the concept of superdegree, which he proposed to write down with arrows pointing up:
In general
Graham suggested G-numbers:
The G 63 number is called the Graham number, often denoted simply G. This number is the largest known number in the world and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
“I see clusters of vague numbers that are hiding there, in the darkness, behind a small spot of light that the candle of the mind gives. They whisper to each other; conspiring who knows what. Perhaps they don't like us very much for capturing their little brothers with our minds. Or, perhaps, they simply lead an unambiguous numerical way of life, there, beyond our understanding ''.
Douglas Ray
We continue ours. Today we have numbers ...
Sooner or later, everyone is tormented by the question, what is the largest number. A child's question can be answered in a million. What's next? Trillion. And even further? In fact, the answer to the question of what are the largest numbers is simple. You just need to add one to the largest number, as it will no longer be the largest. This procedure can be continued indefinitely.
And if you ask the question: what is the largest number that exists, and what is its own name?
Now we will all find out ...
There are two systems for naming numbers - American and English.
The American system is pretty simple. All the names of large numbers are constructed as follows: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and at the end the suffix-million is added to it. An exception is the name "million" which is the name of the number one thousand (lat. mille) and the increasing suffix-million (see table). This is how the numbers are obtained - trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion. The American system is used in the USA, Canada, France and Russia. You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the American system using the simple formula 3 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral).
The English naming system is the most common in the world. It is used, for example, in Great Britain and Spain, as well as in most of the former English and Spanish colonies. The names of numbers in this system are built like this: so: the suffix-million is added to the Latin numeral, the next number (1000 times larger) is built according to the principle - the same Latin numeral, but the suffix is -billion. That is, after a trillion in the English system, there is a trillion, and only then a quadrillion, followed by a quadrillion, etc. Thus, a quadrillion in the English and American systems are completely different numbers! You can find out the number of zeros in a number written in the English system and ending with the suffix-million by the formula 6 x + 3 (where x is a Latin numeral) and by the formula 6 x + 6 for numbers ending in -billion.
Only the number billion (10 9) passed from the English system to the Russian language, which would still be more correct to call it as the Americans call it - a billion, since it is the American system that has been adopted in our country. But who in our country does something according to the rules! ;-) By the way, sometimes the word trillion is also used in Russian (you can see for yourself by running a search in Google or Yandex) and it means, apparently, 1000 trillion, i.e. quadrillion.
In addition to numbers written using Latin prefixes according to the American or English system, so-called off-system numbers are also known, i.e. numbers that have their own names without any Latin prefixes. There are several such numbers, but I will talk about them in more detail a little later.
Let's go back to writing using Latin numerals. It would seem that they can write numbers to infinity, but this is not entirely true. Let me explain why. Let's see for a start how the numbers from 1 to 10 33 are called:
And so, now the question arises, what's next. What's behind the decillion? In principle, of course, it is possible, of course, by combining prefixes to generate such monsters as: andecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion, quattordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septemdecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion, but these will already be compound names, but we were interested in numbers. Therefore, according to this system, in addition to the above, you can still get only three proper names - vigintillion (from lat.viginti- twenty), centillion (from lat.centum- one hundred) and a million (from lat.mille- one thousand). The Romans did not have more than a thousand of their own names for numbers (all numbers over a thousand were composite). For example, the Romans called a million (1,000,000)decies centena milia, that is, "ten hundred thousand". And now, in fact, the table:
Thus, according to a similar system, the numbers are greater than 10 3003 , which would have its own, non-compound name, it is impossible to get! But nevertheless, numbers more than a million million are known - these are the very off-system numbers. Let's finally tell you about them.
The smallest such number is a myriad (it is even in Dahl's dictionary), which means one hundred hundred, that is, 10,000 does not mean a definite number at all, but an uncountable, uncountable set of something. It is believed that the word myriad came into European languages from ancient Egypt.
There are different opinions about the origin of this number. Some believe that it originated in Egypt, while others believe that it was born only in Ancient Greece. Be that as it may in reality, but the myriad gained fame thanks to the Greeks. Myriad was the name for 10,000, but there were no names for numbers over ten thousand. However, in the note "Psammit" (ie the calculus of sand), Archimedes showed how one can systematically construct and name arbitrarily large numbers. In particular, placing 10,000 (myriad) grains of sand in a poppy seed, he finds that in the Universe (a sphere with a diameter of a myriad of the Earth's diameters) no more than 10 63
grains of sand. It is curious that modern calculations of the number of atoms in the visible Universe lead to the number 10 67
(just a myriad of times more). Archimedes suggested the following names for numbers:
1 myriad = 10 4.
1 d-myriad = myriad myriad = 10 8
.
1 three-myriad = di-myriad di-myriad = 10 16
.
1 tetra-myriad = three-myriad three-myriad = 10 32
.
etc.
Googol (from the English googol) is the number ten to the hundredth power, that is, one followed by one hundred zeros. Googol was first written about in 1938 in the article "New Names in Mathematics" in the January issue of Scripta Mathematica by the American mathematician Edward Kasner. According to him, his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta suggested calling a large number "googol". This number became well-known thanks to the search engine named after him. Google... Note that "Google" is a trademark and googol is a number.
Edward Kasner.
On the Internet, you can often find it mentioned that - but it is not ...
In the famous Buddhist treatise Jaina Sutra dating back to 100 BC, the number asankheya (from Ch. asenci- uncountable) equal to 10 140. It is believed that this number is equal to the number of cosmic cycles required to attain nirvana.
Googolplex (eng. googolplex) is a number also invented by Kasner with his nephew and means one with a googol of zeros, that is, 10 10100 ... This is how Kasner himself describes this "discovery":
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner "s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. At the same time that he suggested "googol" he gave a name for a still larger number: "Googolplex." A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.
Mathematics and the Imagination(1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman.
An even larger number than the googolplex, the Skewes "number, was proposed by Skewes in 1933 (Skewes. J. London Math. Soc. 8, 277-283, 1933.) in proving the Riemann conjecture concerning prime numbers. It means e to the extent e to the extent e to the 79th power, that is, ee e 79 ... Later, Riele (te Riele, H. J. J. "On the Sign of the Difference P(x) -Li (x). " Math. Comput. 48, 323-328, 1987) reduced Skuse's number to ee 27/4 , which is approximately equal to 8.185 · 10 370. It is clear that since the value of Skuse's number depends on the number e, then it is not an integer, therefore we will not consider it, otherwise we would have to recall other non-natural numbers - pi, e, etc.
But it should be noted that there is a second Skuse number, which in mathematics is denoted as Sk2, which is even greater than the first Skuse number (Sk1). Second Skewes number, was introduced by J. Skuse in the same article to denote a number for which the Riemann hypothesis is not valid. Sk2 is 1010 10103 , that is, 1010 101000 .
As you understand, the more there are in the number of degrees, the more difficult it is to understand which of the numbers is greater. For example, looking at the Skuse numbers, without special calculations, it is almost impossible to understand which of these two numbers is greater. Thus, it becomes inconvenient to use powers for very large numbers. Moreover, you can think of such numbers (and they have already been invented) when the degrees of degrees simply do not fit on the page. Yes, what a page! They will not fit, even in a book the size of the entire Universe! In this case, the question arises how to write them down. The problem, as you understand, is solvable, and mathematicians have developed several principles for writing such numbers. True, every mathematician who wondered about this problem came up with his own way of writing, which led to the existence of several unrelated ways to write numbers - these are the notations of Knuth, Conway, Steinhouse, etc.
Consider the notation of Hugo Steinhaus (H. Steinhaus. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd edn. 1983), which is pretty simple. Stein House proposed to write large numbers inside geometric shapes - a triangle, a square and a circle:
Steinhaus came up with two new super-large numbers. He named the number Mega and the number Megiston.
The mathematician Leo Moser refined Stenhouse's notation, which was limited by the fact that if it was required to write numbers much larger than a megiston, difficulties and inconveniences arose, since many circles had to be drawn inside one another. Moser suggested drawing not circles, but pentagons after the squares, then hexagons, and so on. He also proposed a formal notation for these polygons so that numbers could be written down without drawing complex drawings. Moser's notation looks like this:
Thus, according to Moser's notation, the Steinhouse mega is written as 2, and the megiston as 10. In addition, Leo Moser suggested calling a polygon with the number of sides equal to a mega - megaagon. And he proposed the number "2 in Megagon", that is 2. This number became known as the Moser's number (Moser's number) or simply as moser.
But Moser is not the largest number either. The largest number ever used in mathematical proof is a limiting quantity known as the Graham "s number, first used in 1977 to prove one estimate in Ramsey theory. It is associated with bichromatic hypercubes and cannot be expressed. without the special 64-level system of special mathematical symbols introduced by Knuth in 1976.
Unfortunately, the number written in Knuth's notation cannot be translated into the Moser system. Therefore, we will have to explain this system as well. In principle, there is nothing complicated about it either. Donald Knuth (yes, yes, this is the same Knuth who wrote "The Art of Programming" and created the TeX editor) invented the concept of superdegree, which he proposed to write down with arrows pointing up:
In general, it looks like this:
I think everything is clear, so let's go back to Graham's number. Graham proposed the so-called G-numbers:
- G1 = 3..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is 33.
- G2 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G1.
- G3 = ..3, where the number of superdegree arrows is equal to G2.
- G63 = ..3, where the number of overdegree arrows is equal to G62.
The G63 number became known as the Graham number (it is often denoted simply as G). This number is the largest known number in the world and is even included in the Guinness Book of Records. But
Countless different numbers surround us every day. Surely many people wondered at least once what number is considered the largest. You can simply tell a child that this is a million, but adults are well aware that other numbers follow a million. For example, it is only necessary to add one to the number each time, and it will become more and more - this happens ad infinitum. But if you take apart the numbers that have names, you can find out what the largest number in the world is called.
The emergence of the names of numbers: what methods are used?
Today there are 2 systems according to which numbers are given names - American and English. The first is fairly straightforward, while the second is the most common around the world. American allows you to give names to large numbers like this: first, the ordinal number in Latin is indicated, and then the suffix "illion" is added (the exception here is a million, meaning a thousand). This system is used by the Americans, French, Canadians, and it is also used in our country.
English is widely used in England and Spain. According to it, the numbers are named as follows: the numeral in Latin is "plus" with the suffix "illion", and the next (a thousand times larger) number is "plus" "illiard". For example, first comes a trillion, followed by a trillion, followed by a quadrillion, and so on.
So, the same number in different systems can mean different things, for example, the American billion in the English system is called a billion.
Off-system numbers
In addition to numbers that are written according to known systems (above), there are also non-systemic ones. They have their own names, which do not include Latin prefixes.
You can start considering them with a number called a myriad. It is defined as one hundred hundreds (10000). But for its intended purpose, this word is not used, but is used as an indication of the innumerable. Even Dahl's dictionary will kindly provide a definition of such a number.
The next after the myriad is googol, denoting 10 to the power of 100. This name was first used in 1938 - by a mathematician from America E. Kasner, who noted that this name was invented by his nephew.
Google (search engine) got its name in honor of googol. Then 1-tsa with a googol of zeros (1010100) is a googolplex - Kasner also invented this name.
Even larger in comparison with the googolplex is the Skuse number (e to the e to the power of e79), proposed by Skuse in the proof of the Rimmann conjecture on primes (1933). There is another Skuse number, but it is applied when the Rimmann hypothesis is not valid. It is rather difficult to say which of them is more, especially when it comes to large degrees. However, this number, despite its "enormity", cannot be considered the most-most of all those that have their own names.
And the leader among the largest numbers in the world is the Graham number (G64). It was he who was used for the first time to carry out proofs in the field of mathematical science (1977).
When it comes to such a number, you need to know that you cannot do without a special 64-level system created by Knut - the reason for this is the connection of the number G with bichromatic hypercubes. The whip invented a superdegree, and in order to make it convenient to make her notes, he suggested using the up arrows. So we learned the name of the largest number in the world. It is worth noting that this G number got on the pages of the famous Book of Records.
Back in the fourth grade, I was interested in the question: "What are the names of numbers over a billion? And why?" Since then, I have been looking for all the information on this issue for a long time and collecting it bit by bit. But with the advent of Internet access, searches have accelerated significantly. Now I present all the information I have found so that others can also answer the question: "What are the names of large and very large numbers?"
A bit of history
The southern and eastern Slavic peoples used alphabetical numbering to write numbers. Moreover, among the Russians, not all letters played the role of numbers, but only those that are in the Greek alphabet. A special "titlo" icon was placed above the letter denoting the number. At the same time, the numerical values of the letters increased in the same order in which the letters in the Greek alphabet followed (the order of the letters in the Slavic alphabet was somewhat different).
In Russia, Slavic numbering was preserved until the end of the 17th century. Under Peter I, the so-called "Arabic numbering" prevailed, which we still use today.
There were also changes in the names of the numbers. For example, until the 15th century, the number "twenty" was designated as "two ten" (two tens), but then it was shortened for a faster pronunciation. Until the 15th century, the number "forty" was denoted by the word "fourty", and in the 15th-16th centuries this word was supplanted by the word "forty", which originally meant a sack containing 40 squirrel or sable skins. There are two options for the origin of the word "thousand": from the old name "fat one hundred" or from a modification of the Latin word centum - "one hundred".
The name "million" first appeared in Italy in 1500 and was formed by adding a magnifying suffix to the number "millet" - a thousand (that is, it meant "a large thousand"), it penetrated into the Russian language later, and before that the same meaning in in Russian it was denoted by the number "leodr". The word "billion" came into use only since the Franco-Prussian war (1871), when the French had to pay Germany an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs. Like “million,” the word “billion” comes from the root “thousand” with the addition of an Italian augmentation suffix. In Germany and America for some time the word "billion" meant the number 100,000,000; this explains that the word billionaire was used in America before any of the wealthy had $ 1,000,000,000. In the old (XVIII century) "Arithmetic" of Magnitsky, a table of the names of numbers is given, brought to "quadrillion" (10 ^ 24, according to the system after 6 digits). Perelman Ya.I. in the book "Entertaining arithmetic" the names of large numbers of that time are given, somewhat different from those of today: septillion (10 ^ 42), octalion (10 ^ 48), nonalion (10 ^ 54), decallion (10 ^ 60), endecalion (10 ^ 66), dodecalion (10 ^ 72) and it is written that "there are no further names".
Naming Principles and List of Large Numbers
All the names of large numbers are constructed in a rather simple way: at the beginning there is a Latin ordinal number, and at the end the suffix-million is added to it. The exception is the name "million" which is the name of the number one thousand (mille) and the augmentation suffix-million. There are two main types of names for large numbers in the world:
3x + 3 system (where x is a Latin ordinal number) - this system is used in Russia, France, USA, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Greece
and the 6x system (where x is a Latin ordinal number) - this system is the most common in the world (for example: Spain, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Finland). In it, the missing intermediate 6x + 3 end with the suffix -billion (from it we borrowed a billion, which is also called a billion).
The general list of numbers used in Russia is presented below:
| Number | Name | Latin numeral | Increasing prefix SI | Reducing prefix SI | Practical value |
| 10 1 | ten | deca | deci- | Number of fingers on 2 hands | |
| 10 2 | one hundred | hecto- | centi- | About half the number of all states on Earth | |
| 10 3 | one thousand | kilo | Milli- | Approximate number of days in 3 years | |
| 10 6 | million | unus (I) | mega- | micro- | 5 times the number of drops in a 10 liter bucket of water |
| 10 9 | billion (billion) | duo (II) | giga- | nano- | Approximate population of India |
| 10 12 | trillion | tres (III) | tera- | pico | 1/13 of the gross domestic product of Russia in rubles for 2003 |
| 10 15 | quadrillion | quattor (IV) | peta- | femto- | 1/30 parsec length in meters |
| 10 18 | quintillion | quinque (V) | ex- | atto- | 1/18 of the number of grains from the legendary chess inventor award |
| 10 21 | sextillion | sex (VI) | zetta- | chain | 1/6 the mass of planet Earth in tons |
| 10 24 | septillion | septem (VII) | yotta- | yokto- | The number of molecules in 37.2 liters of air |
| 10 27 | octillion | octo (VIII) | no- | sieve- | Half the mass of Jupiter in kilograms |
| 10 30 | quintillion | novem (IX) | de- | thread- | 1/5 of all microorganisms on the planet |
| 10 33 | decillion | decem (X) | una- | roaring | Half the mass of the Sun in grams |
The pronunciation of the numbers below is often different.
| Number | Name | Latin numeral | Practical value |
| 10 36 | andecillion | undecim (XI) | |
| 10 39 | duodecillion | duodecim (XII) | |
| 10 42 | tredecillion | tredecim (XIII) | 1/100 of the number of air molecules on Earth |
| 10 45 | quattordecillion | quattuordecim (XIV) | |
| 10 48 | quindecillion | quindecim (XV) | |
| 10 51 | sexdecillion | sedecim (XVI) | |
| 10 54 | septemdecillion | septendecim (XVII) | |
| 10 57 | octodecillion | So many elementary particles in the sun | |
| 10 60 | novemdecillion | ||
| 10 63 | vigintillion | viginti (XX) | |
| 10 66 | anvigintillion | unus et viginti (XXI) | |
| 10 69 | duovigintillion | duo et viginti (XXII) | |
| 10 72 | trevigintillion | tres et viginti (XXIII) | |
| 10 75 | quattorvigintillion | ||
| 10 78 | quinvigintillion | ||
| 10 81 | sexvigintillion | So many elementary particles in the universe | |
| 10 84 | septemwigintillion | ||
| 10 87 | octovigintillion | ||
| 10 90 | novemvigintillion | ||
| 10 93 | trigintillion | triginta (XXX) | |
| 10 96 | antrigintillion |
- ...
- 10 100 - googol (the number was invented by the 9-year-old nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner)
- 10 123 - quadragintillion (quadraginta, XL)
- 10 153 - quinquaginta, L
- 10,183 - sexaginta (LX)
- 10 213 - septuagintillion (septuaginta, LXX)
- 10 243 - octogintillion (octoginta, LXXX)
- 10 273 - nonagintillion (nonaginta, XC)
- 10,303 - centillion (Centum, C)
- 10 306 - antcentillion or centunillion
- 10 309 - duocentillion or centduollion
- 10 312 - trecentillion or centtrillion
- 10 315 - quattorcentillion or centquadrillion
- 10 402 - tretrigintacentillion or centtretrigintillion
Numbers further:
Some literary references:
- Perelman Ya.I. "Entertaining arithmetic". - M .: Triada-Litera, 1994, pp. 134-140
- Vygodsky M. Ya. "Handbook of Elementary Mathematics". - S-Pb., 1994, pp. 64-65
- "Encyclopedia of Knowledge". - comp. IN AND. Korotkevich. - St. Petersburg: Owl, 2006, p. 257
- "Interesting about physics and mathematics." - Library Kvant. no. 50. - M .: Nauka, 1988, p. 50
In everyday life, most people operate on fairly small numbers. Tens, hundreds, thousands, very rarely millions, almost never billions. About such numbers are limited to the usual idea of a person about quantity or magnitude. Almost everyone has heard about trillions, but very few people have ever used them, in any calculations.
What are the giant numbers?
Meanwhile, numbers denoting degrees of a thousand have been known to people for a long time. In Russia and many other countries, a simple and logical notation system is used:
One thousand;
Million;
Billion;
Trillion;
Quadrillion;
Quintillion;
Sextillion;
Septillion;
Octillion;
Quintillion;
Decillion.
In this system, each next number is obtained by multiplying the previous one by a thousand. A billion is usually called a billion.
Many adults can accurately write numbers such as a million - 1,000,000 and a billion - 1,000,000,000. With a trillion it is already more difficult, but almost everyone will cope - 1,000,000,000,000. And then a territory unknown to many begins.
Getting to know the big numbers closer
Difficult, however, there is nothing, the main thing is to understand the system of formation of large numbers and the principle of naming. As already mentioned, each next number exceeds the previous one by a thousand times. This means that in order to correctly write the next number in ascending order, you need to add three more zeros to the previous one. That is, a million has 6 zeros, a billion has 9, a trillion has 12, a quadrillion has 15, and a quintillion has 18.
The names can also be dealt with if you wish. The word "million" comes from the Latin "mille", which means "more than a thousand." The following numbers were formed by adding the Latin words “bi” (two), “three” (three), “quadro” (four), etc.
Now let's try to visualize these numbers. Most people have a pretty good idea of the difference between a thousand and a million. Everyone understands that a million rubles is good, but a billion is more. Much more. Also, everyone has the idea that a trillion is something absolutely immense. But how much is a trillion more than a billion? How big is it?
For many more than a billion, the concept of "the mind is incomprehensible" begins. Indeed, a billion kilometers or a trillion is not a very big difference in the sense that such a distance still cannot be covered in a lifetime. A billion rubles or a trillion is also not very different, because that kind of money still cannot be earned in a lifetime. But let's count a little by connecting imagination.
The housing stock of Russia and four football fields as examples
For every person on earth, there is a land area of 100x200 meters. These are about four football fields. But if people are not 7 billion, but seven trillion, then everyone will get only a piece of land 4x5 meters. Four football fields against the front garden area in front of the entrance - this is the ratio of a billion to a trillion.
In absolute terms, the picture is also impressive.
If you take a trillion bricks, you can build more than 30 million one-story houses of 100 square meters. That is, about 3 billion square meters of private buildings. This is comparable to the total housing stock of the Russian Federation.
If you build ten-story houses, you will get about 2.5 million houses, that is, 100 million two-three-room apartments, about 7 billion square meters of housing. This is 2.5 times more than the total housing stock in Russia.
In a word, there will not be a trillion bricks in all of Russia.
One quadrillion student notebooks will cover the entire territory of Russia with a double layer. And one quintillion of the same notebooks will cover the entire land with a layer 40 centimeters thick. If we manage to get a sextillion of notebooks, then the entire planet, including the oceans, will be under a layer 100 meters thick.
Let's count to a decillion
Let's count some more. For example, a matchbox enlarged a thousand times would be the size of a sixteen-story building. An increase in a million times will give "boxes" that are larger in area than St. Petersburg. Enlarged a billion times, the box won't fit on our planet. On the contrary, the Earth will fit into such a "box" 25 times!
An increase in the box gives an increase in its volume. It will be almost impossible to imagine such volumes with further increase. For ease of perception, we will try to increase not the object itself, but its quantity, and arrange the matchboxes in space. This will make it easier to navigate. A quintillion of boxes lined up in a row would extend beyond the star α Centauri by 9 trillion kilometers.
Another thousandfold magnification (sextillion) will allow matchboxes lined up to line our entire Milky Way galaxy in a lateral direction. A septillion matchbox would stretch 50 quintillion kilometers. Light can travel such a distance in 5 million 260 thousand years. And the boxes laid out in two rows would stretch as far as the Andromeda galaxy.
There are only three numbers left: octillion, nonillion and decillion. You have to strain your imagination. An octillion of boxes forms a continuous line of 50 sextillion kilometers. It is over five billion light years. Not every telescope mounted on one edge of such an object could see its opposite edge.
Do we count further? A non-million matchboxes would fill the entire space of the part of the Universe known to mankind with medium density 6 pieces per cubic meter. By earthly standards, there seems to be not very much - 36 matchboxes in the back of a standard Gazelle. But a nonillion matchboxes will have a mass billions of times greater than the mass of all material objects in the known Universe put together.
Decillion. The magnitude, or rather even the majesty of this giant from the world of numbers, is hard to imagine. Just one example - six decillion boxes would no longer fit in the entire part of the Universe accessible to mankind for observation.
Even more strikingly, the majesty of this number is visible if you do not multiply the number of boxes, but increase the object itself. A matchbox enlarged a decillion times would contain the entire part of the Universe known to mankind 20 trillion times. It is impossible even to imagine something like that.
Small calculations showed how huge the numbers have been known to mankind for several centuries. In modern mathematics, numbers many times exceeding a decillion are known, but they are used only in complex mathematical calculations. Only professional mathematicians have to deal with such numbers.
The most famous (and smallest) of these numbers is the googol, denoted by one followed by one hundred zeros. Googol is greater than the total number of elementary particles in the visible part of the Universe. This makes googol an abstract number that has little practical use.