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Expert: - 4/20/2009


Question
Hi! My husband and I are right now doing a trivia game with our neighbors where they gave us a bunch of trivia questions to solve in a week and we did the same to them.  Most of them are involving trivia questions about things in our local area, but of course there are some good ones thrown in here in there to stump us.  This is the one question we are stumped on here.  It reads:  Write fifty six octillion four hundred twenty seven sextillion in proper scientific notation.  They probably found this trivia question on the Net and of course my husband and I can't even figure out how to start writing this one with being out of school for almost 30 years.   Thanks for your help.

Answer
One thousnad = 10^3 = 1,000.
One million = 10^6 = 1,000,000.
One billion = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000.
One trillion = 10^12 = 1,000,000,000,000.
One quadrillion = 10^15 = 1,000,000,000,000,000.
One quintillion = 10^18 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.
One sextillion = 10^21 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
One septillion = 10^24 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
One octillion = 10^27 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I had to go through them all again to remember what the power on
the ten was.  If you're into trivia, I'll tell you where this numbering system came from.  Maybe that can be a reply to them.
When they first invented the numbering system, it was in europe.
One million was the first set, and it had 6 six zeroes.

One billion is the second set, where each set had 6 zeros,
since bi was 2.

See, the numbering for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ...
was bi, tri, quad, quint, hex, sept, oct, ...

So 1, 234, 234,345, 456,567 in europe was known as
(1 thousand 234) billion
(234 thousand 345) million
456 thousand 567.

See http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sextillion for a complete reference to this. In Britain, a sextillion is 10^36, since it refers to the 6th number, and 46 is 6*6.  Note that to those who
spoke lating, sex was just 6.

When numbering was translated to the US, instead of each one
(million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, ...) referring to
six digits, they dropped out the thousands and let each refer
to three digits.

I believe that the number above is still that way to the
europeans, but to us it is 1 quadrillion, 234 trillion, 234 billion,
345 million, 456 thousand 567.

So the number, in American units, is
56,000,427,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Now in scientific notation, that's 5.6000427 x 10^21 in the US.
In Great Britain (the country in Europe that speaks englis)
The number is 5.6 000 000 000 000 427 x 10^36.

That's some trivia to return back ...

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