Sunday, November 8, 2009

Big Numbers

Fritz's favorite and best subject is math (takes after his ol' Mama).   We're using Math U See Beta, but he's already figured out some things on his own--like multiples of twelve and how many thousands are in a million.  He also loves big numbers.  We check out library books designed to help kids wrap their heads around concepts like how large a pile of a billion peas would be. 


Today while walking Della, he had a question for me about subtracting larger numbers from smaller ones.  I had to give a brief explanation about the world of negative numbers. No matter how  big a positive number he could think of there was a corresponding negative number .  The whole way home he would quiz me.  "What's 100-200?  What's 1000-9000?"  Now I'm pretty good at math myself, but he stumped me with this one-- "What's one quadrillion minus one googleplex?"  I couldn't tell him, but I assured him it's a negative number.

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