Understanding Large Numbers

Just to get my head around the numbers, I searched the internet using "understanding large numbers."  Thanks a million to Bob Peterson (repmilw@aol.com) who posted the following in the Fall 2003 blog of Rethinking Schools.  Bob teaches fifth grade at La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee.

Before delving into budget issues, I do a couple of activities to help children put meaning behind place value .  .  .  .

I asked the students, "How many days equals a million seconds?  After some initial guesses, the students worked as a group with calculators using different strategies to solve the problem.  Eventually, they came up with about 11.8 days.

I then asked how long it would take for us to count to a million.  Some students suggested we just do it and time ourselves.  Others were more skepitcal.  After some practice with six-digit numbers we estimated it would take, on the average, about two seconds a number.  Some more calculation and the class realized it would take a little over 23 days. "I'm not going to be wasting my time doing that," one student proclaimed.

To visualize a million, I asked the students to look closely at a strand of their hair and then I told them that if one piled a million of those on top of each other it would reach up to a seven story building.  I also showed the students the book How Much Is a Million? by David Schwartz (Scholastic, 1985).  Some of the pages are filled with tiny stars -- 14,364 per page.  The book encourages students to guess how many pages of stars it would take to reach a million, and they are surprised to find it would take 70 pages.

In pennies, if you stacked a million pennies, it would reach almost a mile high.   Check it out!

Multiply that by 6.1.