How Much Is One Million in Sugar?
How Much Is One Million in Sugar?
Big numbers
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- A bowl of white granulated sugar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How long would it take you to count to one million?
Eleven and-a-half days, if you counted at the rate of one number a second.
This activity helps you see how much one million of something is.
Supplies
- White, granulated sugar
- Measuring cup
- One sheet of black construction paper
Instructions
- Measure out one-quarter cup of sugar
- Pour it onto the black construction paper
What Should Happen?
You have just measured out one million granules of sugar.
Why Is This Important?
Numbers with lots of zeros, like million, billion and trillion are hard to understand because it takes so long to count that high. A useful way, though, to understand how really big they are is to compare them to something else that is big. Of course, with a big number, you have to count very small things if you’re going to keep it in a small space. Thus, the sugar granules.
It also helps to compare big numbers to other things that come in big numbers, like the number of people in the United States (314 million or the number of stars in the Milky Way (100 thousand million) A good understanding of big numbers helps prepare grandchildren for careers where this might be useful, such as astronomy or biology.
Thanks to David Adler, author of Millions, Billions & Trillions, for suggesting this activity.
Carol Covin, Granny-Guru
Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”
http://newgrandmas.com
Filed in: education
Gah, this encourages children to make a mess…
Who am I kidding, I do this without the kid around.
It would also be fun to take this to the next level and do a comparison with how much room a million sugar granules take up as opposed to two or three other items.
I just made a batch of cookies, I have several millions pieces of sugar in my recipe. 😉
What about sugar in the raw? Ha, ha! Probably 2/3 cup since the granule is about three times bigger – math is Sweet. Pun intended.
Love it. But then again, I love to mess around in the kitchen, I'm like Jon, I would probably do this for myself for fun. .. and them make something really yummy. 🙂
Did you count to one million to confirm it takes 11.5 days? I need proof!
What you're describing are analogies and metaphors which help individuals of any age to understand the magnitude and complexity of a subject. Like the sugar example.