How many Pennies Are a Million?

One Penny 1 value  1¢, (one cent) width  0.75 inches, (3/4 of an inch) height  0.75 inches, (3/4 of an inch) thickness  0.0625 inches, (1/16 of an inch) weight  0.1 ounces, (1/10 of an ounce) area   0.5625 square inches

One Thousand Pennies 1,000 [5 pennies wide x 5 pennies high x 40 pennies tall]   A thousand pennies is only $10.00 worth of pennies, yet it weighs over six pounds.
value	$10.00, (Ten dollars and no cents)
width	3.75 inches
height	3.75 inches
thickness	2.5 inches
weight	100 ounces, (6.25 pounds)
height stacked	62.4 inches, (5.2 feet)
area (laid flat)	562.5 square inches (3.9 square feet)

Hundred Thousand Pennies

98,304 Ninety-eight thousand three hundred and four Pennies [ Two cubic feet ]   value  $983.04 (Nine hundred eighty-three dollars and four cents) width  24 inches, (two feet) height  12 inches, (one foot) thickness  12 inches, (one foot) weight  614.4 pounds height stacked  512 feet area (laid flat)  384 square feet

One Million Pennies 1,003,776 One million, three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six Pennies [ A wall five by four by one feet thick with a 9-inch cube stepstool ]
value	$10,037.76 (Ten thousand, thirty-seven dollars and seventy-six cents)
width	Four feet
height	Five feet
thickness	12 inches, (one foot)
weight	6273.6 pounds (3.14 tons)
height stacked	5,228 feet ( 0.99 Miles )
area (laid flat)	3,921 square feet

One Billion Pennies 1,000,018,176 One billion, eighteen thousand, one hundred and seventy-six Pennies [ Five school buses. ]   Each of these blocks represents one 9x11x41 foot school bus - as seen below. If you were to stack all these pennies in a single pile, one atop the other, the stack would reach nearly one thousand miles high. For comparison, note that the Space Shuttle typically orbits only 225 miles above the Earth's surface. Only in North America and the general scientific community is this number (1,000,000,000) called a "billion". Most European countries call this number either "one thousand million" or, in some cases, a "milliard".
value	$10,000,181.76 (Ten million, one hundred eighty-one dollars and seventy-six cents)
width	45 feet
height	11 feet
thickness	41 feet
total weight	3,125 tons
height stacked	987 Miles
area (laid flat)	3,906,321 square feet (89.7 acres)

One Trillion Pennies 1,000,000,016,640 One trillion, sixteen thousand six hundred and forty Pennies [ One cube measuring 273 x 273 x 273 feet ]   The same football field, set beside our new cube for scale.
value	$10,000,000,166.40 (Ten billion, one hundred and sixty-six dollars and forty cents)
width	273 feet
height	273 feet
thickness	273 feet
total weight	3,125,000 tons
height stacked	986,426 Miles
area (laid flat)	89,675.2 acres

 

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

 "Grace Hopper and UNIVAC" by Unknown (Smithsonian Institution) -



Flickr: Grace Hopper and UNIVAC. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons -

 Harvard Mark I

 

In 1954 Grace Hopper was the only person in the world able to program the complier (software) for the UNIVAC computer in time for the Navy.

Grace Murray Hopper was born December 9, 1906 and died January 1, 1992. She was an American computer scientist (one of the first in the world) and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944.

 

She invented the first compiler for a computer programming She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging" for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the computer).

 

Here's a picture of her notebook page showing the first computer bug.

Bill Nye’s Mom Was A World War II Code Breaker

You may know Bill Nye, The Science Guy from the wheeled-in TV cart at school or maybe from the YouTube video I showed to your class last year about probability. Bill Nye is real person and is a real scientist who believes that we need more students interested in science, math and engineering.

Bill Nye's Mother was a WWII code breaker She operated some of the first computers ever built. They were built for a single problem, breaking the German Enigma code in WWII.

Structure Films / Via vimeo.com

Here's a picture of Bill Nye as a kid with his Mom.

 

Structure Films / Via vimeo.com

For more information on what Bill Nye has to say about his Mom, click here.

Addition Puzzle

You'll need to print this out (use ctrl-P on your computer).

Just For Fun - Odd Names For Things You Know

Things-

Peen: the side opposite the hammer’s striking side.

Aglet: the plastic coating on a shoelace.

Ferrule: the metal part at the end of a pencil.

Punt: the bottom of a wine bottle.

People-

Griffonage: unreadable handwriting.

Nibling: the non-gender-specific term for a niece or nephew — like sibling.

Language and Math-

Overmorrow: the day after tomorrow.

 Tittle: the dot over an “i” or a “j.”

Obelus: the division sign (÷).

Octothorpe: the pound (#) sign.

Mondegreen: misheard song lyrics.

Vocable: the na na nas and la la las in song lyrics that don’t have any meaning.

Lemniscate: the infinity symbol.

You-

Morton’s toe: when your second toe is bigger than your big toe.

Minimus: your little toe or finger.

Glabella: the space between your eyebrows.

Collywobbles: butterflies in your stomach.

Philtrum: the groove located just below the nose and above the middle of the lips.

Tmesis: when you separate a word into two for effect. Example: “I AM GOING TO ASBO-FREAKIN’-LUTELY BE THE BEST TRIVIA PLAYER ON THE PLANET NOW!”

Let's Get Ready For Sudoku - 6 x 6

OK, you've read the blog on 4 x 4 Sudoku puzzles- right?

Now we're going to start on a harder 6 x 6 puzzle and go over some tips on how to solve them.

First of all, here's a solved 6 x 6 using numbers instead of symbols like we used in the 4 x 4 puzzle.

Notice that each line across, each line up and down, and each 3 x 2 rectangle has the numbers 1 to 6 without any duplicated. This is a solved puzzle.

Here's our first puzzle to solve, but I'm going to give you some tips on how to solve it.

Look at the two squares colored red below. We know from the rules that the missing numbers are 1 and 2 in the upper left rectangle. We also know by looking across that the 1 and 2 cannot be on the same line as the 1 and 2 in the upper right box. So 1 and 2 go where they are shown.

Now look at the first two rows. Five of the six possible numbers are filled in on those rows, so we know what numbers go there.

With these numbers filled in, we can see three different up and down columns that have two possible numbers, just like our first two numbers in the first two rows. They are filled in with red below.

 

Now we can fill in three more numbers because they are the only choices left for the center-left and bottom-left rectangles and the 5th row.

 

 

Now we fill in the 4th row with the only number remaining and the bottom-right rectangle with the two numbers remaining.

 

 

Now the last two numbers are a cinch, they are the only possibilities for column four and five.

 

 

 

Great! We've solved it.

 

Now here are two puzzles for you to solve on your own. Print them out to make it easier.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Let's Get Ready For Sudoku - 4 x 4

Sudoku is a Japanese puzzle where the goal is to place numbers in a 9 x 9 square so that no number is repeated on a line across or down as while as in each 3 x 3 square.

We are going to work up to Sudoku by starting with a 4 X 4 square like so:

We'll start with symbols. Notice that in this 4 x 4 square there are four 2 x 2 squares. Each row across, each column down and each 2 x 2 square has each of the four symbols only once. A Sudoku puzzle is solved when you fill in all the spaces following the rules. Print out the following three puzzles and see if you can fill them in by following the rules:

1. Each row has one of each symbol.
2. Each column has one of each symbol.
3. Each 2 x 2 square has one of each symbol.

 

 

When you finish this, go on to 6 x 6.