Wednesday, October 22, 2008

I need to save this!

Due to the credit crunch my father and I had an arguement - so I want to save this so that I can tell him we were both right!

Quadrillion is the right name, but the number of zeroes is a bit of a contentious issue - the more common version gives billion = 10^9, trillion = 10^12 then quadrillion = 10^15, a one thousandfold increase each time. The older,'English' version is billion = 10^12 (a million million instead of a thousand million) with trillion =10^18 (a million million million instead of a thousand thousand million) and quadrillion = 10^24 (which is fairly obviously derived). Very few people use the latter version now, as the newer 'American' version has replaced it pretty much everywhere except in old books. So you could possibly both be right. Hope this helps!