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Really Big and Really Small Numbers

There is some international confusion about how to name big numbers. The number $1,000,000$ is one million all over the world. But Americans read $1,000,000,000$ (= ${10}^9$ , or a one with nine zeros) as one billion , while in Britain, they say "one thousand million" for ${10}^9$ . For the British, "one billion" means ${10}^{12}$ -- what most other people call "one trillion". (These days the British are starting to switch over to the American system, at least in the scientific world.)

Also, in India, after $1,000$ , they start putting commas after every two zeros. In India, $100,000$ is one lakh (our one hundred thousand) and $10,000,000$ is one crore (our ten million).

Below are the standard American and scientific names given to really huge numbers and really tiny numbers. You may want to review your properties of exponents and exponent tables . The prefixes are used in the metric system (for example, $1000$ grams is a kilo gram, and $1,000,000,000$ watts is a giga watt.)