Sponsored by Very large numbers are cumbersome to write because of all the zeroes. They are hard to compare a number with 20 zeroes at the end looks about the same as one with 19, yet it is ten times larger.
Large numbers are also hard to name.
Once you start talking about a thousand million million million, not only is it long-winded, it s impossible to keep track and to imagine how the number would look when written down. There is another language problem too in the English-speaking world, one billion can mean either one thousand million, as it does throughout this book, or one million million, as it does in Britain. The quickest way around all these problems is to use the simple mathematical method of writing very large or very small numbers, a method used by all scientists too. This form of writing numbers essentially relies on counting zeroes and is called using powers of 10 or exponents . Everyone knows what squaring a number means it is multiplying a number by itself.