Can You Count to a Googol?

May 1, 2000
Gr 2-4-The author illustrates how our number system builds by powers of 10 and helps develop a concept of what those numbers mean. The initial illustrations are silly: a girl balances one banana on her nose; a monkey balances 10 bananas using limbs and tail; 100 eagles pull a basket of children through the sky. A more realistic sequence illustrates millions to billions. A large wooden crate is loaded with 1,000,000 dollar bills; 10 of these crates are loaded onto a flatbed trailer (10 x $1,000,000 or $10,000,000); 10 of the trailers are loaded onto a barge ($100,000,000); and a harbor is filled with 10 barges ($1,000,000,000). The author explains that a googol, the number with 100 zeros, is too big to illustrate. "If you counted every grain of sand on all the worlds' beaches, and every drop of water in all the oceans, that wouldn't even be CLOSE to a GOOGOL." Children are reminded that numbers go on forever by a rocket speeding off into space, accompanied by a trail of zeros. The switch from fanciful to factual in these examples is somewhat jarring, but the pen-and-acrylic cartoons do adequately illustrate the growing numbers. Though David M. Schwartz's How Much Is a Million? (Lothrop, 1985), with its consistent playful tone and imaginative number illustrations, is still a preferable choice, Wells's model of building numbers could be a useful addition.-Adele Greenlee, Bethel College, St. Paul, MN

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