Googol and Google

In last week’s post, we have talked about large numbers and their importance to scientific studies and everyday life. In this post, we talk about one of the most famous large numbers: googol.

A googol is the name of the number which is 10^{100} or a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. If you are wondering how large it is, well it is fairly large since the number of atoms in the observable universe is only 10^{80}. That means that we need 10^{20} universes, the size of the observable universe, to create a universe with googol number of atoms.

googol

The term googol was coined in 1938 by Milton Sirrota (he was 9 years old the time he invented the term), nephew of Edward Kasner, an American mathematician. Kasner was famous for his book Mathematics and the Imagination where he introduced the term googol. » Read more

Exploring Computational Thinking

Exploring Computational Thinking is one of Google’s latest endeavors in K-12 curriculum. Computational thinking (CT), according to Google, involves a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that are commonly used by software engineers to write computer programs.

Innocent girl on laptop

Several of this computational techniques are the following: » Read more

Google+: A Facebook replacement?

If you have enjoyed Facebook, Google+ is another way to get connected to your family, friends, and colleagues online.  Google+ is a new social networking service lauched by Google. As of this writing, Google+ is on field testing and membership is on an “invite only.”

The things I like most about Google+ is that you can choose “circles” who can view your wall posts. You can share intimate thoughts with friends, and have professional conversations with colleagues without one group reading the message for the other. This is not the case in Facebook yet.

Here are some of the major features of Google+. » Read more