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googol

/ˈgugɔl/
IPA guide

Other forms: googols

A googol is a famously huge number, literally ten to the one hundredth power. A math teacher might offer extra credit to students who correctly write out the digits of a googol on the blackboard.

If you want to write out a googol, write the number one followed by one hundred zeros. Mathematicians sometimes use the idea of a googol to illustrate the difference between an enormous number — one that's too large to imagine — and infinity. The word googol was invented by the young nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner, one of the authors of the 1940 book "Mathematics and the Imagination."

Definitions of googol
  1. noun
    a cardinal number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros (ten raised to the power of a hundred)
    see moresee less
    type of:
    cardinal, cardinal number
    the number of elements in a mathematical set; denotes a quantity but not the order
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