Definition:Googol
Definition
A googol is defined to be $10^{100}$.
Also see
Historical Note
The googol was apparently invented by a schoolchild writing $1$ followed by $100$ zeroes on a blackboard:
- $10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000$
In discussing the googol, Edward Kasner and James Newman point out that the number of grains of sand on Coney Island is approximately $10^{20}$.
It is also estimated that the number of raindrops falling on New York, for example, during the course of a century, is far less than a googol.
The total number of particles in the visible universe, even, has been estimated as between $10^{80}$ and $10^{87}$, again still far less than a googol.
Numbers of this size are really only needed in the field of combinatorics, as was presciently suggested by Kasner and Newman.
Linguistic Note
The word googol was coined by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner.
Beware the mis-spelling google, which is the name of an internet search engine.
Sources
- 1940: Edward Kasner and James Newman: Mathematics and the Imagination
- 1962: Clifton Fadiman: The Mathematical Magpie: Introduction
- 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$
- 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{100}$
- 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{51}$
- 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $10^{100}$
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): googol
- 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): googol