Numbers

Have you ever looked at a sunflower and noticed its perfect spiral pattern? Or counted the petals on a daisy? If you did, you might have found something amazing without knowing it. You found a secret code that shows up all through nature – a pattern called the Fibonacci sequence. This special number pattern has […]

When you write down a number today – say, 153 – it feels natural. You use the digits 1, 5, and 3. You instantly know it means one hundred, plus five tens, plus three ones. Our system, using the digits 0 through 9 and the idea of place value (where a digit’s position tells you […]

Think about numbers. They start simply enough: 1, 2, 3… for counting things. Then maybe fractions, for parts of things. Zero comes along to represent nothing. But what about numbers less than nothing? What about negative numbers, like -5 or -10? Today, we see negative numbers everywhere. Thermometers show temperatures below zero. Bank accounts can […]

What is zero? Most people today would say “nothing.” It’s the absence of quantity, the empty space on the number line. It seems simple, obvious even. But would you believe that for centuries, some of the smartest people in the world fiercely resisted the idea of zero as a real number? The journey of zero […]

Travel almost anywhere in the world outside the United States, and things look a bit different. Distances are in kilometers, not miles. Temperatures are in Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Liquids are sold in liters, not gallons. The vast majority of the globe uses the metric system, a simple, logical system based on powers of ten. Yet, […]