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Huge Numbers

Carry out calculations with numbers up to one million including strategies to check answers.
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No calculator

This is level 6: Real life (some over a million) examples. You will be awarded a trophy if you get at least 8 answers correct and you do this activity online.

Before clicking the 'Check' button, test the reasonableness of your answers by estimating.
Round the numbers you’re working with to get a rough idea of the answer.

1

The radius of the earth is 6,378 km. Calculate the diameter of the earth in kilometers. ☐ ✓ ✗

The Earth
2

Recently is was calculated that the population of North Korea was 26,420,123. The population of South Korea was 51,711,321. How many more people live in the south than in the north? ☐ ✓ ✗

3

The Tesla Model Y was the best-selling car model worldwide in 2024 with a base price in the UK of £45,000. How many of these cars could be bought with a million pounds? ☐ ✓ ✗

4

The James Webb Space Telescope cost around £8,400,000,000 to build. If the cost was shared equally between 21 countries, how much did each country pay?
£ ☐ ✓ ✗

5

How many minutes are in a normal year (a year that is not a leap year)? ☐ ✓ ✗

6

The distance from Earth to Mars at its closest point is approximately 54,600,000 km. If a spacecraft travels 30,000 km per hour, how long would it take (in hours) to reach Mars at that speed? ☐ ✓ ✗

7

A famous singer's world tour sold 2,310,000 tickets. If the average ticket price was £95, what was the total income from ticket sales?
£ ☐ ✓ ✗

8

The UK government spent £164,000,000,000 on healthcare in one year. If this money was spread evenly across 67 million people, how much was spent per person to the nearest whole number of pounds?
£ ☐ ✓ ✗

9

A video game company sold 12,500 copies of its new game worldwide. If each copy cost £49, what was the total revenue from sales?
£ ☐ ✓ ✗

10

There are 272 active London Underground stations.
Of these, 183 stations have no escalators, but the remaining stations each have an average of about six escalators. Each escalator has an average of roughly 130 steps in total, remembering that half of the steps are hidden at any one time as they return underneath.

How many escalator steps are there altogether across the London Underground network? ☐ ✓ ✗ London Underground sign

Check

This is Huge Numbers level 6. You can also try:
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5

Most Numbers Are Huge

Instructions

Try your best to answer the questions above. Type your answers into the boxes provided leaving no spaces. As you work through the exercise regularly click the "check" button. If you have any wrong answers, do your best to do corrections but if there is anything you don't understand, please ask your teacher for help.

When you have got all of the questions correct you may want to print out this page and paste it into your exercise book. If you keep your work in an ePortfolio you could take a screen shot of your answers and paste that into your Maths file.
Why am I learning this?

Mathematicians are not the people who find Maths easy; they are the people who enjoy how mystifying, puzzling and hard it is. Are you a mathematician?

Comment recorded on the 18 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs. Peacock, Downe House School and Kennet School:

"My year 8's absolutely loved the "Separated Twins" starter. I set it as an optional piece of work for my year 11's over a weekend and one girl came up with 3 independant solutions."

Comment recorded on the 1 February 'Starter of the Day' page by Terry Shaw, Beaulieu Convent School:

"Really good site. Lots of good ideas for starters. Use it most of the time in KS3."

Whose Idea Was This?

Did you enjoy doing this 'Huge Numbers' activity? Are you curious about who originally came up with this idea in Maths? Discover more about one of the mathematicians who is associated with this concept.
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Answers

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Go Maths

Learning and understanding Mathematics, at every level, requires learner engagement. Mathematics is not a spectator sport. Sometimes traditional teaching fails to actively involve students. One way to address the problem is through the use of interactive activities and this web site provides many of those. The Go Maths page is an alphabetical list of free activities designed for students in Secondary/High school.

Maths Map

Are you looking for something specific? An exercise to supplement the topic you are studying at school at the moment perhaps. Navigate using our Maths Map to find exercises, puzzles and Maths lesson starters grouped by topic.

Teachers

If you found this activity useful don't forget to record it in your scheme of work or learning management system. The short URL, ready to be copied and pasted, is as follows:

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Description of Levels

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Basic Addition

Basic Subtraction

Basic Multiplication

Basic Division

Level 1 - Addition with huge numbers

Level 2 - Subtraction with huge numbers

Level 3 - Multiplication with huge numbers

Level 4 - Division with huge numbers

Level 5 - Problem Solving with huge numbers

Level 6 - Real life (some over a million) examples with huge numbers

Standard Form - for even bigger numbers!

More Arithmetic including lesson Starters, visual aids, investigations and self-marking exercises.

Answers to this exercise are available lower down this page when you are logged in to your Transum account. If you don’t yet have a Transum subscription one can be very quickly set up if you are a teacher, tutor or parent.

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How many people are there in the world? You can find out on the Absolutely Everyone page.

The Earth

Example

Don't wait until you have finished the exercise before you click on the 'Check' button. Click it often as you work through the questions to see if you are answering them correctly. You can double-click the 'Check' button to make it float at the bottom of your screen.

Answers to this exercise are available lower down this page when you are logged in to your Transum account. If you don’t yet have a Transum subscription one can be very quickly set up if you are a teacher, tutor or parent.

Log in Sign up

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