Hello! And welcome to one of my favorite number sense talks!

You are about to embark on a journey designed to help you construct an understanding of very large numbers, using our most famous irrational number, Pi. The two objectives for this lesson are 1) to consider the size of a very large number by comparing it to something that is known, and 2) use unit conversion to convert distance to time. Objective #2 is to help us consider Objective #1. Before we begin, you remember Pi, for every circle in the world, Pi is the ratio of Circumference to diameter. If you were to do the actual division, no matter what circle you chose, you would get the exact same number every time, and it would be 3.14159265358 and on and on. The number you would get is this: 3.141592653589793238.. etc. For simplicity we assigned it a Greek Letter, Pi. In fact there has been some disagreement about where we should stop dividing. Some are comfortable with 3.14. Other want more accuracy so use more digits. The state of Indiana once actually passed a law that this ratio would be simply 3. That didnt last long! But how much is enough! If you did the long division you would find that it would never end. ever. Eventually you would have to give up. But some people just wont give up! Last I heard, Pi has been calculated up to 1.2 trillion digits!! I dont know about you, but I find that number hard to imagine. Just how big is 1.2 trillion digits anyway? This is the very large number we will investigate today. Look at the number 10. It is two digits long. I made a sample of a 10 digit number and on my screen it appeared to be about two inches long. The number 1.2 trillion is And now it is time for our journey. Lets imagine that we could print out all 1.2 trillion digits of Pi that have been identified. Lets print them in a font where every character is 1 mm wide, there are no spaces and no commas. In other words, we will have a strip of paper .2 trillion mm long. Lets lay it out on the sidewalk or street in front of the school. Try to visualize how long you think it might be? Think about a millimeter. A millimeter is pretty tiny isnt it? How long could this possibly be? If you were to walk it from beginning to end, at a normal pace, how long do you think it would take? WIthout calculating it, jot down your best guess now. a 13 digits number. I wanted to show you a sample 1.2 trillion digit number, but I dont think I have enough space. Lets use another approach to finding out how long that number is, and how much space it would take up. In our American number system, average walking speed is about 3 mph. But since millimeters are metric, lets use 5 Kilometers per hour. (Its about the same). We will also need to review a concept that I call fancy forms of one. Two divided by two. x + 1 divided by x + 1. Basically anything divided by itself is equal to one. Another way to say it is that any two values, equal to each other and divided by each other will equal 1. Some familiar forms of 1 are 12 inches over 1 foot. or 60 minutes over 1 hour. Writing them in the other order is still equal to 1, such as 1 foot over 12 inches. We will use this concept to write a conversion formula to help us figure out how long it would take to walk the 3.2 trillion digits of Pi when each digit is printed 1 mm wide. Are you ready for the unit conversion formula? First, since the digits are in mm and walking speed is measured in Kilometers, we need to convert the mm number to Kilometers. I will do this in two steps. I build one form of 1 using the fact that there are 1000 mm in one meter, and the other using the fact

that there are 1000 meters in one kilometer. How did I decide which unit goes on the top? Because I know that I want unneeded units to cancel out. You might want to click to the next slide for the explanation. The millimeter units cancelled each other out, and the meter units canceled each other out, done in red and blue. Next we can cancel out trailing zeros. This is done in green and yellow. When we multiply what is left you can see we have a much simpler number in terms of Kilometers. So Pi is 1 million, 241 thousand, 100 Kilometers long (when digits are each only 1mm wide). But how long will it take to walk 100 Kilometers? Please click to the next slide for the rest of the story. We can convert this distance to time needed to walk it, by multiplying by the walking rate of 5K per hour. I fliped the form of 1 to be sure the Kilometers would cancel out. Please take a moment and do the division now, then click to the next slide to check your answer. So far we know it will take 248,220 hours to walk the length of 2.7 trillion mm. This number is not very meaningful to me, so I think we should continue our conversions to express it in day, months, and maybe even years if necessary! In order to convert hours to years, lets use familiar forms of 1, like 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year, writing each in such a way that the intermediate units get cancelled out. I hope you will also remember to simplify the numbers before you start multiplying and dividing with rediculously large numbers! (Hint divide 248,220 and 365 each by 5, divide that result and 24 by 2 for starters). (Another way is 248,220 and 24 are both divisible by 6. Check out my Lazy Mathematician Series for an explanation of divisibility tests if you are interested). Please click to the next screen when you have your answer ready. Yes, its true. You did it correctly. If 1.2 trillion digits, 1 mm wide each, were laid side by side, and if you took a walk along the trail of numbers, it would take you 28 years and 4 months. That is with no stopping, sleeping, or anything. Can you think of anything going on today right here in the United States that is measured in the trillions? Thats pretty scary, isnt it? Here is an opportunity to practice what we just learned about unit conversions. Try to write the entire conversion as one equation. The answer is on the next screen, so dont peek until you are ready! Dont forget to cancel like units, and cancel the 2s from numerator and denominator instead of multiplying them all in! Id say that 1 gallon of milk is more than you need to buy, just like 1.2 trillion digits of Pi is more than we need. The rest is fun to have, but will be wasted. Thanks for watching!