Googol

For the Internet company, see Google. For other similar titles, see Google (disambiguation).

A googol is the large number 10¹⁰⁰, that is, the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros:

10,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000

The term was coined in 1938^[1] by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1929–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

Other names for googol include ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.

A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of hypothetically possible chess moves. Edward Kasner used it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.

In popular culture

• The company name Google is an alteration of the word "Googol"^[2] made by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as described in the book The Google Story by David A. Vise.

See also

• Google
• Googolplex
• Large numbers
• Names of large numbers

References

1. ^ Kasner, Edward and Newman, James R. (1940). Mathematics and the Imagination. Simon and Schuster, New York. ISBN 0486417034. 
2. ^ Brin, S. and Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7):107–117

External links

• Weisstein, Eric W., "Googol" from MathWorld.
• googol at PlanetMath.