Okay, so the other day I was staring at this random number, 35, on a piece of paper. I have no idea where it came from, but it got me thinking: what does 35 really mean? I mean, we see numbers all the time, but do we ever stop to think about what they represent?
So, I started by, well, just looking at the number. It’s a 3 and a 5, right? That’s pretty obvious. But then I broke it down.
- It’s 30 plus 5.
- It’s three tens and a five.
- It’s also 7 times 5.
My little Experiment
I decided to get a little more visual. I grabbed a bunch of paper clips from my desk (because, why not?). I started counting them out into groups.
First, I made three groups of ten paper clips each. That’s the 30 part. Seeing those three piles definitely made the “thirty-ness” of it feel more real. Then, I added a little group of five paper clips. There it was! 35 paper clips, all spread out.
Then I tried something different. I arranged the paper clips into rows of five. Guess what? I ended up with seven rows! It was like a little rectangle of paper clips. It was 35 in a totally different way.
Finally, I decided to draw a little visualize to help me, it looked like this.
It’s kind of silly, I know, spending all this time thinking about the number 35. But it actually made me appreciate how many different ways we can represent the same thing. It’s not just a symbol on a page; it’s a quantity, a set of things, a multiple of other numbers. Now I find myself doing this with any number, and my view on numbers is forever changed!
