Last summer I went through the colors of the rainbow on my toenails. Every two weeks they went from: red to yellow to green to purple to orange to blue. Jasper (4 at the time) would be the first to notice and comment as soon as walked in the door Monday morning.
This afternoon upon picking up Hayden from camp, the first thing he noticed was that I wasn't wearing my token Triquetra necklace that I am rarely seen without. If you're a Sex and the City fan, it is the equivalent of a "Carrie" necklace. Signature Sarah.
Instead I was wearing my treasured Tiffany & Co. necklace given to me as a "thank you for helping raise our daughter" gift from Sophie's parents at the end of a wonderful year.
"Waszat?!" Hayden exclaimed immediately as his tiny fingers explored the "O" on delicate chain. "A necklace." I matter-of-factly replied.
His eyebrows crossed in concentration, "Where other one?"
"Well Mr. Observant, it's at home. This one is from Sophie and I thought I'd wear it this week."
"Oh. I want other one back!"
Hours later in the pool, he pointed to it again and said "Want other one back!!!"
Kids don't miss a beat, which is one of many reasons why I love working and playing with children. My intelligence and observance is constantly challenged and questioned; I learn as they learn. If I don't know something (which happens a lot with an ever questioning five year old) we learn it together. I swear I learn more from them than they do from me.
Today Jasper asked me why girls have to wipe when they pee and not boys?
Last week he wanted to know where worms come from?
Last month he asked me if Googolplex was larger than Infinity?
"Google-what?" Was my chuckled response.
"Googolplex. It's a number with zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero ONE HUNDRED times!"
I thought he was making it up based off of his recent learning's about the internet and fascination with infinity. Not so much. Turns out, Googolplex is a very real, very big number made up by a nine-year old, in 1938, to be determined by choice and emotion (1 + writing zeros until you get tired). It was then adjusted to meet correct mathematical standards and is now defined as the number 10googol, which can also be written as the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros (i.e. 10100 zeros).
1 googolplex
= 10googol
= 10(10100)
=1010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
I'm well aware there are many, many, many things I don't know, but being out-mathed by a five year old was slightly painful. Clearly I would not be a good candidate for "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" if I just got maxi-brained by a young pupil who learned about this number from his classmate. That "diploma" I received back in Kindergarten? Starting to wonder how legitimately earned it was....? ;P I blame my lack of numerical knowledge on the fact that I detest math (though ironically I am amazing at accounting) instead of worrying that maybe I'm just stupid.
Fascinated, I did some research, learned a thing or two, and thought I would impart my expanding knowledge...
In 1938, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta coined the term googol; Milton then proposed the further term googolplex to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition "because different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have [boxing champion] Carnera be a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer." A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Edward Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.
Admit it, you feel smarter. :)
1 comment:
I totally feel smarter...I really don't want Brynlee to talk to becuase I will always feel dumb!! haha! They really don't miss a beat, I love that too!!
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