Saturday, January 31, 2009
Was the First Super Bowl More or Less Than a BILLION Seconds Ago?
Hey, another kind of "over-under"!!
Just some food for thought to put the number one billion and history in perspective...
A billion seconds ago it was about 1976.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no creature walked the earth on two feet.
And a billion dollars lasts 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate our
Government spends it.
There are many references for this on the web and I'm sure you've seen it before. You can check the accuracy (perhaps the last one is a little off!). I still like sharing this with students as it not only puts the concept of a billion in perspective but it does offer a wonderful application of 1-significant digit estimates, scientific notation and orders of magnitude. Can you imagine asking students to estimate that a billion seconds is roughly 32 years without a calculator!!
Where are these kinds of estimates currently in our math curriculum? More likely occurring in a science class? Do they belong somewhere in our classes or are they just amusing curiosities? You can guess where my thoughts lie!
Posted by Dave Marain at 5:29 PM 5 comments
Labels: 1-significant digit estimation, estimation, scientific notation