- 3 hours ago
Season 11 (1995-1996)
Season 12 (1996-1997)
Original production funding provided by: Kellogg’s Cereal Company
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
PBS Viewers Like You
National Science Foundation
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
Season 12 (1996-1997)
Original production funding provided by: Kellogg’s Cereal Company
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
PBS Viewers Like You
National Science Foundation
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Help all kids learn and grow with PBS Kids. Thank you for supporting your PBS station.
00:30Take a look. It's in a book.
01:00Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Have you ever wondered how many people there are in a big city?
01:15Take New York City, for example. Just look at all these people. Walk down any busy street during rush hour, it's like an ocean of people.
01:26Waves of them coming in every direction. Whenever I visit New York City, I just can't get over the numbers of people there are.
01:35Eight million people. No wonder the streets are so crowded. And of course, they're not all walking.
01:42I wonder how many trains, buses, and taxis it takes to get all of these people around the city.
01:50Ah, here's someone who might have some answers.
01:56Hey, excuse me. Could you tell me please how many people you've had in your cab today? In this week? In a year? In your whole career?
02:05Okay. Let me run a few numbers by you. This year, I've driven 23,200 trips in my cab. That's 46,400 times the doors open and close. You with me?
02:16Mm-hmm. Let's do the math. Now, I've been driving a cab for 10 years. In my career, that's almost a quarter of a million people who have driven in just my cab alone.
02:25Wow. Now, consider this. There are 11,787 Yettocabs in New York City. If they're all as busy as I am, and believe you me, they are, that's 273 million taxi trips in New York City every year.
02:39Wow. Now, when you start to consider those numbers, police. Taxi!
02:45Oh, that's me. Gotta go, Levi. See you later.
02:48Wow. That's amazing. Millions of people riding in taxis, buses and trains. Millions walking the streets of the city. Millions! It's hard to wrap your mind around a number that size. Try to imagine even one million of something. I mean, how much room does a million of something need? How far does it reach? What does a million look like? How much is a million?
03:14A million is a huge number. One of the biggest numbers. Near infinity. A lot more than a hydrate. There's a thousand times a thousand. There's more than a million animals in the world. A million is more people than you can fit in a stadium. There's more than a million stars in the sky. When I think of a million, I think of the hairs on my head.
03:40There's a million snowflakes in a blizzard. If I counted to a million, I'd be here all day. One plus one plus one times ten times ten times ten times ten times ten. Plus one plus one. A million is how many times my sisters get on my nerves. It's how many kisses I could give my mommy.
04:04One thing is for certain. A million of almost anything is a lot. And how do you know when you've got a million? Well, you could start counting. Or you could ask an expert. Meet Marvelosissimo, the mathematical magician. He's just the right wizard to unlock answers to that ticklish question. How much is a million?
04:32One, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million!
04:44How much is a million?
04:50By David M. Schwartz
04:52Pictures by Stephen Kellogg
04:56Read by Nick Sullivan
05:00If one million kids climbed onto one another's shoulders, they would be taller than the tallest buildings, higher than the highest mountains, and farther up than airplanes can fly.
05:20I never saw so many kids in my life.
05:24If you wanted to count from one to one million, it would take you about twenty-three days.
05:34If a goldfish bowl were big enough for a million goldfish, it would be large enough to hold a whale!
05:50Bristol!
05:54Here you have one hundred stars.
05:57If this book had a million tiny stars, they would fill seventy pages!
06:06Excuse me, sir, but how much is a billion?
06:14How big is a billion?
06:16Well, if a billion kids made a human tower, they would stand up past the moon!
06:25If you sat down to count from one to one billion, you would be counting for ninety-five years!
06:40Wow!
06:41If you found a goldfish bowl large enough to hold a billion goldfish, it would be as big as a stadium!
06:56Wow!
06:57If this book had a billion tiny stars, its pages spread side by side would stretch almost ten miles!
07:16Hey, how tremendous is a trillion?
07:19Hmm, how tremendous is a trillion?
07:25Well, if a trillion kids stood on top of each other, they would reach way, way, way beyond the moon!
07:37Beyond Mars and Jupiter too!
07:40And almost as far as Saturn's rings!
07:46Wow! One trillion kids!
07:50If you wanted to count from one to one trillion, it would take you almost two hundred thousand years!
08:03If you put a trillion goldfish in a goldfish bowl, the bowl would have to be as big as a city harbor!
08:13Wow!
08:14If you put a trillion of our stars onto a gigantic roll of paper, it would stretch all the way from New York to New Zealand!
08:28Hey, that's really far!
08:30You bet it is!
08:31Well, how much is a zillion?
08:45I just love enormous, gigantic, colossal numbers!
08:54Just saying their names tickles my brain!
08:57A million, a billion, a trillion, a quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion!
09:04I could go on forever!
09:05And believe it or not, it's pretty easy to imagine what those numbers represent!
09:10You just have to start with a small number, like ten!
09:16Apples!
09:19Ten juicy apples!
09:21A taste tempting treat!
09:23Put them in a sack!
09:25They're good enough to eat!
09:27Ten sacks of ten makes those apples more fun!
09:32We've got a hundred apples, and we've just begun!
09:37Ten baskets of a hundred, that's what's best!
09:42Keep a thousand apples in a shiny treasure chest!
09:48Ten chests of a thousand, that's first rate!
09:53Pile ten thousand apples in a packing crate!
09:58Now ten crates of ten thousand!
10:01What a piece of luck!
10:03One hundred thousand apples!
10:05Now inside this truck!
10:10Ten one hundred thousands!
10:12Count no higher!
10:14You've got a million apples in this high flyer!
10:18Now, it's one thing to imagine what a million would look like, but it's another to actually handle a million.
10:28People do it all the time.
10:29In fact, I know of a place where making a million happens every day, and in a very colorful way.
10:37At Benny and Smith factories like this one, Crayola crayons have been made for the past 93 years.
10:50The factory works 24 hours a day, 240 days a year, putting out millions of crayons.
10:58Every day, and all night long, rainbows of colors fill the factory machines.
11:19Colors like lime green, violet, and tickle me pink.
11:32To make crayons, you start with two ingredients.
11:35Pigment, like this cinnamon red.
11:38You also need paraffin, the waxy stuff that gives crayons their texture.
11:43The paraffin is poured into a cauldron, and melted down.
11:55Then it's mixed with the red pigment.
11:57The hot mix is poured into a bucket, and Mark pours them by hand into the molds.
12:11I make crayons on a flatbed mold machine.
12:14In one day, in eight hours, we make about 92,000 crayons.
12:18Those holes are filling with hot wax that will cool and make perfect crayons.
12:24Mark scrapes the extra wax off the top of the mold, and dumps it back into the hot wax mixture.
12:39Nothing is wasted.
12:45Next, crayon racks are fitted on top of the molds.
12:48And watch this.
12:51The machine hydraulically lifts 512 perfect cinnamon stick crayons into the racks.
13:06How do I feel about crayons?
13:07Oh, crayons are my life.
13:09I come here every day, I make crayons.
13:10I go home and I color.
13:14Across the floor, lots more colors are being made.
13:17But here, crayons are not hand-poured.
13:21They're strictly machine-powered.
13:26These rotary molds have hundreds of tiny jets that shoot hot-colored wax into the mold holes.
13:32The machine is called a rotary because the whole table rotates like a big wheel.
13:49It moves very slowly so that by the time the mold travels all the way around the table, the wax is cool and the crayons are perfectly formed.
14:01Now the crayons travel to the wrapping machine.
14:16Blue and colored paper labels wrap each crayon and give each color a name.
14:34Helen here has been wrapping crayons for 32 years.
14:53She's handled a few crayons in her time.
14:56Okay, I've worked here 32 years, plus I did 180,000 crayons a day on the two machines, which would be 530,000 crayons a week.
15:09That would be 2 million crayons a year.
15:12Well, Helen, that's more than 86 million crayons a year.
15:16But who's counting?
15:19Okay, now the crayons are ready to be packed in boxes.
15:29Crayons come in all sized boxes.
15:32I can remember my first box of 8 perfect crayons.
15:36Today, there are boxes of 16, 24, 48, 64, or 96 crayons.
15:44Betty is packing sleeves of crayons for the big box of 96.
15:50It's not as easy as it looks.
15:53This machine packs 57 sleeves per minute, and she's been packing crayons for 10 years.
16:01If it makes 57 a minute, I work 8 hours a day.
16:05If you're working 10 years of that, about 50 million, about 50 million, quite a few.
16:11When all the sleeves are filled, the boxes travel down the assembly line to the boxing machine.
16:22This robot flips the boxes open.
16:50And pushes the crayons into the big boxes.
16:57Here they are, ready to go to kids all over the world.
17:09Millions of them.
17:11Crayola crayon factories have made over 100 billion crayons.
17:22Now that's a big number.
17:26Sometimes, knowing the exact number of things is important.
17:36For example, you'll definitely want all 96 colors in your new box of crayons.
17:41But there are times when knowing the exact number isn't crucial.
17:44And those are the times when knowing how to estimate comes in handy.
17:48You may not know it, but you estimate all the time.
17:55About how much time do you need to get ready for school in the morning?
18:00Approximately how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will fill you up at lunch?
18:07Roughly how many pizzas will you need to feed the class for your birthday party?
18:20Estimating comes in handy for professionals too.
18:23Take, for example, the people in charge of a huge football stadium.
18:27How do they feed and take care of thousands of hungry and thirsty football fans?
18:32Well, here are some folks who know the drill.
18:35Let's go Giants!
18:40Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey can hold over 77,000 people.
18:46But not every game brings in the same number of cheering fans.
18:50Sometimes there are only 50 or 60 or 70,000.
18:55The stadium officials never really know the exact number of people that will show up to a particular game.
19:01They have to estimate.
19:07Here's how they do it.
19:15First, they factor in the weather.
19:20Then, how well the team is playing.
19:22And finally, they look at last year's weekly attendance.
19:28This helps them predict how many people to expect on game day.
19:35At every game, tickets are carefully collected.
19:43The ticket boxes are brought beneath the stadium to the ticket counting room, where all the tickets are counted out by hand.
19:55When all the ticket stubs are counted, stadium officials know the exact number of people attending the game.
20:01Last year's records help them predict how many people to expect today.
20:06This helps the food managers figure out how much mustard, soda, and how many hot dogs they'll need to feed today's crowd.
20:18It's freezing out here today, and experienced vendors know what they'll need to defrost those ice-cold football fans.
20:33When it's really cold outside, we sell a lot of hot chocolate, we sell a lot of coffee, and we sell a lot of hot dogs per game.
20:47If it's cold, we could sell about 1,000 cups of hot chocolate a game.
20:52You got hot chocolate?
20:53This is only one of more than 40 food stands in the stadium.
20:57They can count on selling approximately 40,000 hot chocolates today.
21:02What do people eat on warmer days? Pretzels.
21:15If the weather is warm, we sell approximately 500 pretzels.
21:19Thank you, sir.
21:21500 pretzels times 40 food stands, that's 20,000 pretzels in one day.
21:28We deliver anywhere from 16,000 to 20,000 pretzels a week to this stadium.
21:35I estimate I delivered almost a million pretzels since I've been working for the company.
21:40Wow, that's a lot of pretzels.
21:44Last but not least, the bathrooms.
21:47How much paper does it take to accommodate thousands of people?
21:52At Giant Stadium, there are 72 bathrooms.
21:55At home, you'd use this size toilet paper.
21:58But here at the stadium, we use big rolls because we have lots of people.
22:04While you're in the stands enjoying the game,
22:06behind the scenes, the estimation experts keep you fed and comfortable.
22:11And once in a while, an exact number comes along that's fun to know about.
22:28The New York Public Library.
22:30Are you ready for this?
22:32There are over six million books in this building alone.
22:35You'll have to start soon if you want to make a dent in that reading list.
22:39In the meantime, here are three that you can really count on.
22:43But you don't have to take my word for it.
22:47There may be a million stars in the sky, but there's only one sky.
22:52There may be 30 pages in this book, but it's only one book.
22:56This book is called Only One.
22:59This book shows you how you get one thing out of lots of things.
23:04Like twelve eggs make only one dozen.
23:07Eleven cows, but only one herd.
23:11Four wheels, but only one wagon.
23:15Do you get it?
23:16Eight horses, but only one merry-go-round.
23:19It's kind of neat the way a lot of small things make one big thing.
23:24This is a really cool way to look at numbers.
23:27There may be a thousand people with my name, but there's only one me.
23:32My name is Carly, and this book is one in a million.
23:36Hi, I'm Jack.
23:38I read a very funny book called 100 Hungry Ants.
23:42Let me tell you about it.
23:45A hundred ants are going to a picnic.
23:48They are very hungry.
23:50They walk in a long, long line.
23:54The littlest ant says,
23:57We're going too slow.
24:00So they make two rows of fifty.
24:03But they're still not fast enough.
24:06So the littlest ant says,
24:09Let's try ten rows.
24:11Ten rows with ten ants hurrying to a picnic.
24:16Will they make it?
24:18I think you'll like this book about picnics, bugs, and numbers.
24:22I sure did.
24:24Hi.
24:25Do you think it's possible to count the stars in the sky?
24:28Well, this is a story about a boy who tried.
24:31It's called, How Many Stars in the Sky?
24:34It's late at night.
24:36The boy in the story is wide awake, wondering how many stars in the sky.
24:42He goes into his backyard.
24:45His dad sees him and tries to help him count the stars.
24:49They go to the city for a different view.
24:52They can't see the sky.
24:54The lights are too bright.
24:59Then they decide to go to the country.
25:02There are so many stars.
25:04Before they can finish counting, they fall asleep.
25:08I'm Eric.
25:09And if I were going to count stars, I would use a telescope.
25:13What would you do?
25:15There are millions everywhere.
25:20Whether it's people in the big cities,
25:24fishes in the oceans,
25:28or stars in the night sky.
25:32Sometimes big numbers may seem as unreachable as those stars,
25:36but don't be afraid to ask how many.
25:39There are ways to count just about everything that exists in our world.
25:46Or out of it.
25:48I'll see you next time.
26:06I can go anywhere.
26:19I can be anywhere.
26:27Today's Reading Rainbow books are
26:29How Much is a Million? by David M. Schwartz.
26:33Pictures by Stephen Kellogg.
26:35Published by Lothrop Lee and Shepherd Books.
26:37A division of William Morrow and Company.
26:44One Hundred Hungry Ants.
26:46By Eleanor Pences.
26:47Illustrated by Bonnie McCain.
26:49Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
26:55Only One.
26:56By Mark Harshman.
26:58Illustrated by Barbara Garrison.
27:00Published by Cobble Hill Books.
27:02An affiliate of Dutton Children's Books.
27:04A division of Penguin Books USA.
27:10How Many Stars in the Sky.
27:13By Lenny Hort.
27:14Paintings by James E. Ransom.
27:16Published by Tambourine Books.
27:18A division of William Morrow and Company.
27:21Those are watching him now.
27:24The sky of Mmmm.
27:26Kindness.
27:27We are married.
27:28More films per week.
27:29digestive reminds round.
27:30Olden to the Mole is aнемel價 cube.
27:31Chat community,
27:32so we can't show you that freeform.
27:33Danke.
27:34How Can You Locate.
27:36New and Thirty one just keep th 법ing.
27:37For us lived in the Sky Birch.
27:38Two.
27:39The räンジャons first found cleaned and現.
27:41The one sow.
27:42The one sock renewal.
27:43The tomorrow month wasn't � JENNINGS.