The Life of Me

I was reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (that was... Well... A book... I don't really know what I thought of it... It wasn't bad, I guess), and I reached the part when Billy Pilgrim is telling the distance Tralfamadore is from Earth. I don't remember the exact number, but I know that it was one trio of 0's past a trillion. I asked my older sister, "What comes after trillion?" And she said, "I don't know... Zillion?" We both kind of assumed that wasn't true, but we had no clue what it really was. I asked my aunt, who is a teacher, and she said she was nearly certain that it was quintillion. I just now looked it up, even though I read Slaughterhouse Five a bit of a while ago, and my aunt-teacher was half-correct: Quintillion is after trillion, though it comes after quadrillion. Assuming that homeworktips.about.com is right, the order is below. I'm posting this on behalf of myself and my lovely readers who I'm sure actually exist by now (that's a joke... I honestly have no clue if anyone besides me reads this, which would be really loser-ish if it really was just me), so that you can just be reading this epic blog, and then you start to wonder about the Great Beyond Trillion, and then you see this, and it improves your life immensly:

(I must admit, I was rather disappointed that "zillion" didn't exist...)

Name / Number of Zeros / Number of Trios of Zeros*

Trillion / 12 / 4 

Quadrillion / 15 / 5

Quintillion / 18 / 6

Sextillion / 21 / 7  (Please, be mature.)

Septillion / 24 / 8 (I've never understood why "sept" is used for 7-ish things, when SEPTember is then ninth month of the year...)

Octillion / 27 / 9

Nonillion / 30 / 10

Decillion / 33 / 11

Undecillion / 36 / 12

Duodecillion / 39 / 13

Tredecillion / 42 / 14

Quatttuor-decillion / 45 / 15 (It looks like some weird planet's name... Are there supposed to be 3 "t's?")

Quindecillion / 48 / 16

Sexdecillion / 51 / 17 (Holy Toledo, numbers, stop being so inappropriate!)

Septen-decillion / 54 / 18 (Septe-mber...)

Octodecillion / 57 / 19 (Octo-ber...)

Novemdecillion / 60 / 20 (Novem-ber...)

Vigintillion / 63 / 21 (...Um... Never mind.)

Centillion / 303 / 101

*You'll notice, the Number of Trios of Zeros is just the Number of Zeros divided by 3. How nifty is that? I'll bet you never would've guessed it!

(I have no idea why the chose to skip from 21 trios of zeros to 101 trios... But imagine writing out a centillion! Sheesh! When would you ever need 303 zeros?) (Well, pi, I guess...)

Hope this makes your life very wonderful!

-Sue Donimm