A teaspoon of water may not seem like much, but if you take the 167,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules and lay them out in single file, you will have a very skinny line of […]
Stretching a Teaspoonful
The Size of Smallness
If you have a hard time telling the difference between kilometers, meters, and centimeters, you are really going to struggle with nanometers. At one-billionth of a meter, the nanometer is used to […]
You Have to Share Your Birthday — But Not Necessarily Your Cake
Put 23 people in a room and there is a statistical probability of 50% that two of them have the same birthday. Increase the number of people to 70, and the odds […]
How Are You Going to Go?
When it comes to death, the only real certainty is that we all will face it eventually. As to the manner in which you are likely to leave this world, well, statisticians […]
Happy New Year? What Are the Odds?
No doubt you received many wishes for a happy new year as the calendar started over once again. Have you stopped to consider the likelihood that you will still be here to […]
Numerical Laughing in the Land of Smiles
In Thailand, the number 5 is pronounced, “ha.” Instead of seeing LOL, you will frequently see “555,” as slang for laughter. Read more fun facts about languages. Read more fun facts about […]
Not in the Cards to Repeat a Shuffle
Photo credit: By Alan Cleaver (Flickr: Shuffling the deck) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons In a deck of 52 cards, there are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. To give you an idea of […]
How Much is Googol?
A googol is 10100 or 1, followed by 100 zeroes. In contrast, a googolplex is 10googol or 10(10100) or 1, followed by 10100 zeroes.To write out googolplex, be prepared to invest some […]
A Story About Many Stories
The Burj Khalifa (Khalifa Tower) in Dubai officially opened on January 4, 2010. It currently holds the record as the tallest man-made structure.
A Carnation By Any Other Name (or Color or Number) May Not Smell as Sweet
If you think you can’t go wrong with a gift of flowers for the one you love, think again. While flowers tend to be universally regarded as a gift of love or […]
Chess: A Game of Limitless Possibilities
Because of its complexity, chess offers limitless possibilities. After just three moves, there are over 9,000,000 possible configurations of the board.
A Billion By Any Other Name….
Depending on whether a country uses the Long Scale or the Short Scale for its numbering system, 1,000,000,000,000 will always be 1,000,000,000,000, but whether you express that number as one billion or […]
Nerd Humor
The following equation can be expressed as a limerick. Can you figure it out? Here it is: Integral z-squared dz from 1 to the cube root of 3 times the cosine of […]
How Many Zeros In…?
Most of us are pretty confident with what to call numbers that end with three or six zeroes. After that, things can get a little fuzzy. Part of the problem arises from […]
A Very Big Piece of Pi
Daniel Tammett first came to worldwide prominence on March 14th, 2004 – otherwise known as Pi Day (3/14). To raise money for an epilepsy foundation, Tammett spent five straight hours reciting the […]
Commonplace Fun Facts 