Math & Numbers Facts for Kids
Mind-bending number facts
Calculus was independently developed by Isaac Newton in England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Germany during the late 17th century. The dispute over who invented it first is one of the most famous in the history of mathematics.
Zero was invented by ancient Indian mathematicians around 500 CE. Before zero existed, there was no way to write numbers like 101 or 1000 without a placeholder.
Pi (3.14159...) never ends and never repeats. Mathematicians have calculated it to more than 100 trillion decimal places and still haven't found a pattern.
No matter how big or small a triangle is, its three angles always add up to exactly 180 degrees. You can tear the corners off any triangle and line them up to prove it!
Prime numbers β numbers divisible only by 1 and themselves β go on forever. The ancient Greek mathematician Euclid proved there are infinitely many primes more than 2,000 years ago.
Honeybees build their hives using perfect hexagons. Mathematicians proved that hexagons tile a flat surface using less material than any other shape β bees figured this out long before humans did.
The Pythagorean theorem states that in a right triangle, the square of the longest side equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This rule was known in Babylon nearly 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born.
The number 1 is NOT a prime number, even though it is only divisible by 1 and itself. Mathematicians exclude it from the primes to keep important rules about factoring numbers consistent.
An old legend asks: if you put 1 grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, and keep doubling, how much rice is on the 64th square? More than 9 quintillion grains β enough to cover the Earth several times.
The number e (approximately 2.71828) is one of the most important constants in mathematics. It describes how things grow continuously, from compound interest to the spread of diseases.