Post by Wookiee on Jun 2, 2006 16:07:17 GMT -5
Logarithmic scales allow a large range of numbers to be compressed into a much smaller one. An old story involves a foolish king who promises to give one of his subjects a grain of rice, then double it for every square on a chessboard:
By the final square (no. 64), the king owes more than 9 x 1018 (or 9 million trillion) grains, too much to produce even if the entire Earth were used for rice fields until the Sun burns out.
This kind of doubling is called exponential growth. It occurs often in nature: a single cell becomes a baby in only nine months by dividing into 2, then 4, then 8, then 16. . .
By the final square (no. 64), the king owes more than 9 x 1018 (or 9 million trillion) grains, too much to produce even if the entire Earth were used for rice fields until the Sun burns out.
This kind of doubling is called exponential growth. It occurs often in nature: a single cell becomes a baby in only nine months by dividing into 2, then 4, then 8, then 16. . .
