@intel: #DidYouKnow The storage capacity of the human brain is approximately 2.5 petabytes (2.5 million gigabytes).

Question: What does 1 million pages look like?

• We chose a big book in the classroom – the Collins School Dictionary
• We counted the number of pages: 866 (We had to count some blank pages and other pages that did not have page numbers)
• 1,000,000 divided by 866 = 1155 dictionaries
• That is a lot of dictionaries – what would they look like?
• We measured the thickness of one dictionary: 5.4 cm
• 1155 dictionaries would take up 1155 x 5.4 =  6237cm = 62.37 m

Conclusion 

• The perimeter of our classroom is about 30m so this would be a double shelf of dictionaries all the way round the classroom 
• The classroom is about 3m from the floor to the ceiling.
• 62.37 divided by 3 = 21 stacks of dictionaries from the floor to the ceiling 

We tried to make one stack but it came tumbling down…

… so we cheated a bit!

What next?

• Does a dictionary contain 1 million letters?
• How many dictionaries contain 1 million words?  Words with definitions?
• Are the a million words in the English language?