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This podcast is designed to give English students extra practice by discussing events, history, culture and language.
Big Numbers are Little Numbers Working Together– A2 Fruit
Today we’re playing with big numbers! We’ll break big numbers into fun, smaller parts. We’ll take huge things — like emojis, songs and steps and divide, multiply, add, subtract, and round them. Listen and guess the answers!
Emojis are everywhere. There are about 3,700 emojis in the world. Let’s round that number to make it easier. Rounded to the nearest thousand, that’s 4,000 emojis!
Now imagine your phone can only show 10 emojis at a time. If you divide 4,000 by 10, how many screens of emojis would you scroll through? 400, right? And if you swiped one screen a second, how many minutes would it take you? Let’s see. 400 screens times one second for each screen is 400 seconds, obviously. And there are 60 seconds in a minute, so how many minutes would you spend scrolling? It is:
Almost 3 minutes
Almost 10 minutes
Almost 7 minutes
If you said almost 7 minutes, you are correct. It would be 6 minutes and 40 seconds to be exact. Now, there are many walking challenges out there in the world. Race for Life in the U.K. is one of the most known walking events. Millions of people have taken part in this charity event since it began. Partipants wear pink and can walk, jog or run to raise money for cancer research.
But let’s make this easy. Let’s say you walk 1,000 steps a day. If every 100 steps equals one minute of walking, how many minutes do you walk?
Well, 1,000 steps divided by 100 every minutes 10 minutes! I bet you walk more than that each day.
But now let’s multiply: If you walk those same 1,000 steps every day for 7 days, how many steps will you walk in 3 weeks?
Let’s the do the math. 1,000 steps X 7 days = 7,000. And there are 3 weeks of 7,000 steps, so 7,000 X 3 is …. you got it! 21,000 steps. The world loves music. When I was young, I listened to music on a tape cassette in my cassette player, but we called it a Boombox. I would record songs off the radio, my boombox had a radio, and create a very horrible quality playlist. Today, creating a playlist is a simple as clicking a few buttons in an endless supply of songs.
Let’s imagine your playlist has 243 songs. Let’s round up and say 250. If each song is about 4 minutes, how many minutes of music do you have on your playlist? Let’s multiply: 250 songs × 4 minutes for eachg song = 1,000 minutes of music! Now, if you listen to your playlist for 50 minutes a day, how many days will it take you to listen to your entire playlist?
Let’s do the math! We know you have 1,000 minutes of music, so 1,000 minutes divided by 50 minutes a day. Well, that’s 20 days. Is it enough, or do you need a second playlist?
So today we learned that big numbers aren’t scary — they’re just lots of little numbers working together. Whether you’re counting emojis, walking steps, or listening to your favorite songs, you can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and round to understand the world around you.
Your homework: Create a math problem using pizza slices and the number 800. Use two math functions in your math problem. Tell it to your VivaLing coach or family member. Did they get it right?