Whatsa' Million?
          We will be using numbers throughout the year to describe distances, lengths, degrees, and quantities of atoms, years, cells and stars.  It's useful if you have an appreciation of just how BIG a million actually is.  Here is a simple table listing common "Powers of 10" numbers, a few with exponential notation, i.e. 1 x 106  .

 
number, or power of ten
 exponential notation
0.001
0.01
0.1
1.0
10
100
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
10.000,000
100,000,000
1,000,000,000
 one thousandth,  1 x 10-3
one hundredth,   1 x 10-2
one tenth,  1 x 10-1
one
ten
one hundred
one thousand,  1 x 103
ten thousand
one hundred thousand
one million,   1 x 106
ten million
one hundred million
one billion,  1 x 109

1.  Write the following numbers in exponential notation.
          10,000     1,350     2,700,000     .0003     .00075

2.  We understand thousands, millions, and billions, but what is 1,000,000,000,000 or 1 x 1012 ?

3.  To get a better understanding of just how many a million really is, do the following simple activity.
            Open your word processing application to a new file.  Set the font to 12 pt. Times and with
            the standard margins type a string of 10 asterisks **********.  Now select all 10 asterisks and
            copy/paste ten times giving you 100 asterisks.  Repeat this by selecting all 100 asterisks
            then copy/pasting ten times giving you 1000 astericks.  Repeat this by selecting all 1000 asterisks
            then copy/pasting ten times giving you 10,000 astericks.  Now make an educated guess.....
            HOW MANY PAGES WILL YOUR FILE  CONTAIN WHEN YOU HAVE PRODUCED A
            MILLION (1 x 106 ) ASTERICKS?  Select/copy/paste astericks until you have a million.
            ..............Beware!  do not print or even save this file!, Just see how many pages it requires.