How much is a million?

Today the fourth graders in my class (except for Mallika, Archit, Rhea, and Swathi) presented their “How Much Is A Million” projects.

My project was on pencils. I learned that a million pencils put eraser-to-point is 18,500,000 cm long, 6,000,000 grams, and a million pencils put width to width is 700,000 cm. My favorite part was when the weight crushed the person.

Greg’s project was on flash drives. I learned that the length of a million flash drives is equal to around 140,000 football fields. My favorite part was the introduction, in which he crossed out certain parts of the text. “Today I will be presenting the project Mrs. Chen made me do I wanted to do. I had to will compare one million of an object to something else. The instructions said I have to I want to use two ways to prove each mathematical equation correct.”

Kevin’s project was on Eta Carina. At first, we settled in for a nice presentation, but then he said it was the sun, and then he said it was Alpha Centauri… anyways, it was a complete mess. The equations had too many big numbers and zeroes and took too long to explain.

Patrick Fan’s project was crazier. I think he plays too much video games. He included Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Mario, and some other characters. He also included too many animations and distractions. There was at least one thing flying around at any given moment.

All in all, I enjoyed watching some projects and did not enjoy watching others.