What is a googol?

[tk2kewl]

[TexasProgresive]

1. 10 to 100th place

and a googolplex is 10 to 1 million.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

6. a googolplex is much higher that 10 to 1million

it is 10^(10^100)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex

Dat's a big ole number...

sP

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. Can I get an echo?

[rock]

3. It says 10100 (ten thousand one hundred)

I puzzled over this several minutes. It must have dropped the "to the" symbol, i.e. 10^100 (10 to the 100).

Addendum: why didn't they ask what is a googolplex? Couldn't wait long enough for the answer?

[DreamGypsy]

7. Yeah, I don't see a big problem with making the video for a googleplex..

... since saying 'zero' or '0' takes a second, the video would only last about 7.55×10^91 years, which is about 5.5×10^81 times the age of the universe.

(credit: help from wikipedia on the example)

[rock]

10. Ah! Just enough time!

[rocktivity]

4. (Exhumes junior high school algebra)

A one followed by one hundred zeros?


rocktivity

[SidDithers]

5. It's a 50C homeopathic dilution...

If you buy a 50C homeopathic dilution, you're getting:

10 oz of stuff diluted in 10^100 oz of water.

That's powerful stuff.

Sid

[MineralMan]

8. Whoa!

[RadiationTherapy]

9. "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired"

"In 1938, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term googol, which is 10^100, then proposed the further term googolplex to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition "because different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera be a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer.""[1] (wikipedia)

[derby378]

11. By comparison, some estimates of the observable universe...

...put the total number of atoms in the observable universe at 10^87.

A googol, or 10 durotrigintillion, is 10^100.

We shall now contemplate the sheer magnitude of a googolplex, a number so large that there's not enough ink or paper to write out all the zeros. Anywhere.