june

How many seconds are there in a day? What would your guess be?

Really this is just long multiplication, so it’s not that difficult as long as you’re careful, but it is a fact many mathematicians have at their fingertips. Somehow it’s something they get curious about, they sit down and work out the answer, and it sticks. So: How many second are there in a day?

What about how many seconds in a year? What would your guess be? A million? A billion? And, thinking about it, what exactly is a year?

In case you get stuck

  • this is how gorillas work out long multiplication
  • this is how zombies work out long multiplication

and Matt Parker, talking about eclipses, gives some insight into why a year is much more complicated than it appears. A year is 365 days, surely? Or 365 ¼ days? “Unfortunately it’s not that simple”.