Everybody knows what to call big numbers when it comes to a dozen or so digits, but what about when the numbers get bigger than that? I was reading an article on Damn Interesting about the physical difficulties in folding a piece of paper, and tried to figure out how long a piece of paper would be needed to make 51 folds (which is impossible, by the way.) It’d take a lot of paper. 164,888,007,565,194,000,000,000 miles of paper to be (reasonably) exact.
That got me to thinking how a number that large would be expressed. There’s always powers of ten, which would make that number 1.659×10²³. That works out to be But that doesn’t really do much for me. And I started wondering what that number would sound like when expressed in thousands, billions, trillions, and so on. And I found that there really are names for these really big numbers. And they go like this…
| thousand | 4 to 6 digits |
| million | 7 to 9 digits |
| billion | 10 to 12 digits |
| trillion | 13 to 15 digits |
| quadrillion | 16 to 18 digits |
| quintillion | 19 to 21 digits |
| sextillion | 22 to 24 digits |
| septillion | 25 to 27 digits |
| octillion | 28 to 30 digits |
| nonillion | 31 to 33 digits |
| decillion | 34 to 36 digits |
| undecillion | 37 to 39 digits |
| dodecillion | 40 to 42 digits |
| tredecillion | 43 to 45 digits |
| quattuordecillion | 46 to 48 digits |
| quindecillion | 49 to 51 digits |
| sexdecillion | 52 to 54 digits |
| septendecillion | 55 to 57 digits |
| octodecillion | 58 to 60 digits |
| novemdecillion | 61 to 63 digits |
| vigintillion | 64 to 66 digits |
| unvigintillion | 67 to 69 digits |
| dovigintillion | 70 to 72 digits |
| trevigintillion | 73 to 75 digits |
| quattuorvigintillion | 76 to 78 digits |
| quinvigintillion | 79 to 81 digits |
| sexvigintillion | 82 to 84 digits |
| septenvigintillion | 85 to 87 digits |
| octovigintillion | 88 to 90 digits |
| novemvigintillion | 91 to 93 digits |
| trigintillion | 94 to 96 digits |
| untrigintillion | 97 to 99 digits |
| dotrigintillion | 100 to 102 digits |
| tretrigintillion | 103 to 105 digits |
| quattuortrigintillion | 106 to 108 digits |
| quintrigintillion | 109 to 111 digits |
| sextrigintillion | 112 to 114 digits |
| septentrigintillion | 115 to 117 digits |
| octotrigintillion | 118 to 120 digits |
| novemtrigintillion | 121 to 123 digits |
I’m sure there’s more somewhere, but that’s what I was able to find, and it’s plenty impressive. I’m not even sure how to pronounce some of those words.
In the process of digging up this information, I ran across several really cool math-related websites. One of the best has to be the Kokogiak Megapenny Project, which helps to visualize large numbers using, of course, pennies. For example, did you know that ten million pennies stacked up would make a cube 6 x 6 x 6 feet. If all those pennies were laid out flat, side-by-side, like a huge carpet of pennies, it would nearly cover one acre. If stacked in a single column it would reach 9.88 miles into the air. Oh, and it would weigh in at around 31.3 tons. That’s a lot of coin.