Ron Turbyfill, age 11, of Charlotte, North Carolina, for his question:

What is a googolplex?

Before we approach the googolplex we must first introduce ourselves to the googol, which is an astronomical number invented by a nine year old boy. This young student and his uncle were both very interested in mathematics. The nephew had a yen for a big number, far bigger than any ordinary number. His uncle had taught him the mathematical trick called the power of ten, which is a shorthand method for writing down big numbers. You write down the number 10 in normal size and add another number in a small size at the top right hand side of it. The small sized number indicates how many times you multiply ten by itself. When this complex number is multiplied by any other number, the little number above the 10 tells how many zeros to add to the other number. For example, scientists frequently use the power of 10 rather than write out 20 or 30 zeros in large numbers. But the astronomical number invented by the young student took 10 all the way to the 100th power and it is called the googol. It is one with 100 zeros. Now we are ready for the googolplex. It is 10 to the goo¬gol power    or 10 multiplied by 10 a googol number of times. So far, nobody has had any practical use for the googolplex    though it is nice to know we have it.