1. In the front of your exercise book...
Underline the last piece of work Write today’s date (Thursday, 28 February 2019)
How Big is Big?
On August 23rd 2008, a UCLA computer in the GIMPS PrimeNet network discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime, 243,112,609-1, a mammoth 12,987,189 digits long!!
Its discovery triggered payment of the $100,000 reward for finding the first Mersenne prime number with more than 10 million digits
This is a big number but just how big is big?
Use your knowledge of maths to explain in plain English how big this number actually is
Mersenne Link

2. How Big is 12,987,189 Digits?...
If I started writing this number at the rate of
I would finish the job in approximately
If I only worked 8 hours a day it would take
If only worked 5 hours a day it would take
My printer would take to print the whole number
If I wrote each digit on a strip of paper spaced at 1 digit every the strip of paper would reach from this classroom to
If I wrote each digit in a square in my exercise book I would need exercise books to write the number
If I stacked the exercise books on top of each other they would be high