”I’ve told you a million times!” How many times have you heard that one? A million?
I don’t think so. A million is an awfully big number. Some cities have a million
people living in them, but have you ever wondered how many people that really
is? What would it look like to have them all in one spot?
My son likes to count. I have to admit, it is kind of annoying, but how do you tell a kid to stop counting things. I have many times in the car heard “I’m going to count to one thousand.” Maybe next time I will say “No, No, Please count to 1 million.” How long would it take?
If you spoke one number per second, which would be difficult when the numbers got to something like 196,735, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you would be done in … Well, you tell me! How long would it take to count to one million saying one number per second?
Are you still wondering how much a million really is? Try this:
Print the page of asterisks found in the units and worksheets section and count the number of asterisks on the page. After you have counted the number of asterisks, complete the worksheet.
• How many asterisks are on the page?
• How many pages would it take to have a million asterisks?
• Measure the size of the page and calculate how many asterisks would be on a piece of paper that is one square foot. Explain how you got your answer!
• Calculate the area of a football field in square feet. (Hint: a football field is 100 yards long and 1920 inches wide)
• What percentage of a football field would be covered by a million asterisks?
• If you started in one corner at the goal line, placed your pages of asterisks along the goal line towards the other side, and continued doing this until you ran out of pages, how far from the goal line would you get?
Now, Let’s talk BILLION!
• How many pages would it take to make a billion asterisks?
• How many square feet would a billion asterisks cover?
• How much of a football field would a billion asterisks cover?
• How about 6 billion?