On really BIG numbers

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When I give my introductory neurobiology lecture, I usually try to impress upon my students how really complex the human brain is. It is very easy just to say “the brain is made of about one hundred billion cells, called neurons”…
If I just say that, I will get the most inexpressive blank faces you would ever see. I know this from experience… You see, all of us talk about millions; for many people nowadays, 1 million dollars is not a huge amount of money anymore (it is for me… (:-)…). So, with the economy and all that, we are used to talk of billions, and even more. However, have you ever thought exactly how much a billion of anything is?
Let’s suppose that you want to count a billion of anything, how long would it take, at one number per second?
Anyone?
It is actually a simple calculation, the kind of calculation that can be done (literally) on a napkin while having a coffee at Sta… I mean, a coffee shop:

Yep, it would take you close to 32 years… that is just 1 billion… more on really big (and small) numbers in future posts!
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Published by orpagan

I am a husband, a father of three, and a baldie, who also happens to be a pretty good (I hope) University Professor and Researcher. My undergraduate degree is in General Science, and my MS is in Biochemistry, both from the University of Puerto Rico. My PhD is in Pharmacology, with an emphasis in Neurobiology, from Cornell University. I love science! (do I really need to say it?) In this blog, I mainly talk about science, especially to non-scientists, but from time to time I explore topics like how is it like to raise a boy with autism, science fiction, education, etc. I am usually able to give these and other topics a scientific twist. I also blog about my favorite (non-human) types of organisms, the flatworms, especially planarians. I use planarians as animal models in pharmacology. If you’d like to see my papers so far, click here. Even though I am well published in scientific journals, I got the popular science writing bug relatively recently. I am a scientist who writes, and I have published three book so far. I hope you enjoy my posts. The opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone. They do not represent the views of my employer, my wife, my children, my parents & siblings, or Chuck Darwin…

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