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1,000,000

Natural number

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Through 1000 (number), Natural number and Metre

It is commonly abbreviated:

  • in British English as m (not to be confused with the metric prefix "m" milli, for 10−3, or with metre),
  • M,
  • MM ("thousand thousands", from Latin "Mille"; not to be confused with the Roman numeral MM = 2,000),
  • mm (not to be confused with millimetre), or
  • mn, mln, or mio can be found in financial contexts.

In scientific notation, it is written as 1×106 or 106. Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix mega (M), when dealing with SI units; for example, 1 megawatt (1 MW) equals 1,000,000 watts.

The meaning of the word "million" is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.

The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in "Not in a million years" and "You're one in a million", or a hyperbole, as in "I've walked a million miles" and "You've asked a million-dollar question".

1,000,000 is also the square of 1000 and the cube of 100.

Visualising one million

Even though it is often stressed that counting to precisely a million would be an exceedingly tedious task due to the time and concentration required, there are many ways to bring the number "down to size" in approximate quantities, ignoring irregularities or packing effects.

  • Information: Not counting spaces, the text printed on 136 pages of an Encyclopædia Britannica, or 600 pages of pulp paperback fiction contains approximately one million characters.
  • Length: There are one million millimetres in a kilometre, and roughly a million sixteenths of an inch in a mile (1 sixteenth = 0.0625). A typical car tire might rotate a million times in a 1,900-kilometre (1,200 mi) trip, while the engine would do several times that number of revolutions.
  • Fingers: If the width of a human finger is 22 mm (7⁄8 in), then a million fingers lined up would cover a distance of 22 km (14 mi). If a person walks at a speed of 4 km/h (2.5 mph), it would take them approximately five and a half hours to reach the end of the fingers.
  • Area: A square a thousand objects or units on a side contains a million such objects or square units, so a million holes might be found in less than three square yards of window screen, or similarly, in about one half square foot (400–500 cm2) of bed sheet cloth. A city lot 70 by 100 feet is about a million square inches.
  • Volume: The cube root of one million is one hundred, so a million objects or cubic units is contained in a cube a hundred objects or linear units on a side. A million grains of table salt or granulated sugar occupies about 64 mL (2.3 imp fl oz; 2.2 US fl oz), the volume of a cube one hundred grains on a side. One million cubic inches would be the volume of a small room 8+1⁄3 feet long by 8+1⁄3 feet wide by 8+1⁄3 feet high.
  • Mass: A million cubic millimetres (small droplets) of water would have a volume of one litre and a mass of one kilogram. A million millilitres or cubic centimetres (one cubic metre) of water has a mass of a million grams or one tonne.
  • Weight: A million 80-milligram (1.2 gr) honey bees would weigh the same as an 80 kg (180 lb) person.
  • Landscape: A pyramidal hill 600 feet (180 m) wide at the base and 100 feet (30 m) high would weigh about a million short tons.
  • Computer: A display resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels contains 1,024,000 pixels.
  • Money: A U.S. dollar bill of any denomination has a mass of 1 gram (0.035 oz). One million dollar bills have a mass of 1 megagram (1,000 kg; 2,200 lb) or 1 tonne (just over 1 short ton).
  • Time: A million seconds, 1 megasecond, is 11.57 days.

In Indian English and Pakistani English, it is also expressed as 10 lakh. Lakh is derived from lakṣa for 100,000 in Sanskrit.

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