Zero Makes Counting a Billion Times More Fun

Occasionally, we invite special guests to share their thoughts on the YouTube Blog. Today, Sesame Street became the first nonprofit to reach 1 billion channel views on YouTube. In honor of that achievement, we bring you a guest post from the Count Von Count about the number zero.

Greetings, it is I, the Count Von Count from Sesame Street. It is a pleasure to be blogging to you today because when I blog I get to count the words. That is 31, 31 wonderful words in my blog post, ah-ha-ha.

Today I want to pay tribute to one of my favorite numbers. What number is it? I am glad you asked. Today I pay tribute to the number zero. A surprising number, I know. For when you have zero there is nothing to count. So why do I, a person who loves to count, love the number zero?

Well, for one thing, zero comes in very handy when there is nothing around to count. For you can count zero of that thing. Like right now, as I look around the castle, I count zero elephants, zero airplanes, and zero Justin Bieber CDs. Wonderful.

But that is not the only reason to love zero. For you see zero can make a little number much bigger. How? Like so—say you have a little number 1, a very nice number indeed. But, when you take that one and put a zero next to it, all of a sudden you have 10, 10 wonderful things to count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – ten little fingers on your hands. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – ten little toes on your feet. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – ten little hot dogs in the meat drawer of my refrigerator. Oh! I love counting to ten.

But that is not all that zero can do. Take that 10 and put another zero on the end, and suddenly you have 100. 100 is a glorious number to count. I can count 100 seats in a movie theater; I count 100 golf balls at the golf course. I count 100 senators in the U.S. Senate. I love counting to 100!

Now what if you take that 100 and place another glorious zero beside it? Then all of a sudden you have 1,000. 1,000 is an extraordinary number to count. You can count 1,000 seashells on the seashore, 1,000 paperclips in Bert’s paperclip collection, 1,000 hairs growing out of your uncle’s ear. I love counting to 1,000!

Let’s not stop there! Let’s add three zeros to that 1,000 and all of a sudden we have 1,000,000 things to count. Have you ever counted to 1 million? I did. When I worked for the census bureau in Rhode Island. You should try it one time, or every four years, your choice.

Now take that 1,000,000 and add three more wonderful zeroes and what do you get? I’ll tell you: you get a number so big, so great, and so huge! When you have nine zeroes after a 1 you get the number 1,000,000,000. Yes 1 billion things to count! And it is all thanks to that lovely number zero. Thank you, zero, you make counting a billion times more fun. By the way, that is 510 words, 512, 513, 514 … 515 words in my YouTube blog post! Ah-ha-ha!




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