Counting the stones of the beach

1999/09/26 Kortabarria Olabarria, Beñardo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Matematika

Internet is a meeting point of curiosities, but not the only one. Out of that you can also find yourself in this crazy world, yes, with stories and amazing people. The current character has first and last names. Bera is a physicist at Sussex University in England, Professor Malcolm Cornwal. This professor has spent the last 35 years telling the pebbles on the beach in the English town of Brighton.

Using the order theory of mathematical magnitudes for calculation, he has concluded that on the beach there are 100,000 million pebbles. If someone wanted to deny the calculations he has made, the British professor pointed out that it would take millennia. "A person able to count a piece of a second would need 2,500 years to count all there are."

Although he does not lack much to reach the retirement age, which is 63 years old, Malcolm Cornwal now has the theory of calculating how many liters of water there is in the La Mancha canal and how many grains of sand are needed to cover beach.

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