2000 Gold Seal Award, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio A Best Book for Children 2001, Science Books & Film You may be able to count all the way to one hundred, but have you ever counted to a googol? It's impossible! In this fun book of numbers, Robert E. Wells explores the wonderful world of zeros and tells how the googol came to be named.

In the American Mathematical Society's first-ever book for kids (and kids at heart), mathematician and author Richard Evan Schwartz leads math lovers of all ages on an innovative and strikingly illustrated journey through the infinite number system. By means of engaging, imaginative visuals and endearing narration, Schwartz manages the monumental task of presenting the complex concept of Big Numbers in fresh and relatable ways. The book begins with small, easily observable numbers before building up to truly gigantic ones, like a nonillion, a tredecillion, a googol, and even ones too huge for names! Any person, regardless of age, can benefit from reading this book. Readers will find themselves returning to its pages for a very long time, perpetually learning from and growing with the narrative as their knowledge deepens. Really Big Numbers is a wonderful enrichment for any math education program and is enthusiastically recommended to every teacher, parent and grandparent, student, child, or other individual interested in exploring the vast universe of numbers.

In 1940, the mathematician Edward Kasner published the book "Mathematics and the Imagination", in which he popularized the words googol and googolplex which his nephew suggested as names for big numbers. The number googol has been defined as 1 followed by a hundred zeros: googol = 10^100 = 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 The much larger number googolplex has been defined as 1 followed by a googol zeros. While this number can easily be written as googolplex = 10^googol = 10^(10^100) using the exponential notation, it has often been claimed that the number googolplex is so large that it can never be written out in full. However in this "Googolplex Written Out" series of books, I am doing just that. It consists out of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 volumes, and each volume contains 1 000 000 zeros of the number googolplex. The first volume also contains the initial digit one with which googolplex starts. www.GoogolplexWrittenOut.com

When an unassuming, rather clueless teenager is zapped by lightning while working on his computer, he absorbs all the information off the internet and his (very) ordinary brain starts to exhibit extraordinary potential. As Howie struggles to control his new-found power he is faced with all sorts of hilarious predicaments, from contending with mega-mean teachers to being ridiculed by the school braniac, a petite know-it-all determined to humiliate him. Can Howie overcome the enormous obstacles before him to defeat his annoying arch-nemesis and solve the peculiar mystery of the stolen Great Quiz Trophy?

With wit and clarity, the authors progress from simple arithmetic to calculus and non-Euclidean geometry. Their subjects: geometry, plane and fancy; puzzles that made mathematical history; tantalizing paradoxes; more. Includes 169 figures.

Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.

Move to another planet? Sounds interesting! In our imaginary spaceship, let's check out the planets in our solar system. Mercury is closest, but it has no air, and it's either sizzling hot or bitterly cold. The atmosphere on Venus is poisonous; plus, human beings would cook there. Mars might work, but you'd always have to be in a protective shelter. And if you got to the outer planets, you couldn't even land as they are mostly made of gas! Our home planet is looking good. Why is Earth so comfortable for plants, animals, and people? As Robert E. Wells explains, it's because of our just-right position form the sun, marvelous atmosphere, and abundant water. Our planet is very special and perfect for us, and that's why we must do all we can to keep Earth healthy.

Professor X and his dog, Y, teach kids how to count exponentially by powers of 10 (1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc.), beginning at 1 and working all the way up to a googol (a 1 followed by 100 zeros) and beyond. Children fascinated by large numbers will be amazed how quickly they can count to really BIG numbers, and they’ll also find answers to questions like “What comes after a trillion?” or “What’s the biggest number in the world?” Real-life examples provide plenty of fun facts, such as how much popcorn Americans eat in one year, or how many hairs are on a square inch of a person’s head. Along with the fun comes some powerful learning, as this unique counting book helps kids understand our number system, which is based on multiples of 10.

A pygmy shrew is small—it's among the littlest mammals! A ladybug is even smaller, but it hardly seems tiny when you compare it to a protozoa! And there are many things smaller still—so small that we can see them only with a microscope. Would you believe there are particles that are so tiny that we can't measure their exact size? Explore the huge world of the very small!

What's faster than a cheetah?—no animal on earth can run faster. But a peregrine falcon can swoop faster than a cheetah can run. And the falcon can't compare to an airplane, a rocket, or the speed of light. Lively text and watercolors will make children laugh while they learn all about speed.