One more, forever

About this video

The natural numbers are the counting numbers: 1, 2, 3 and on. You get every one of them the same way, by starting at one and adding one more, again and again. This short animation builds them up a dot at a time, then lets the count run faster and faster, through the thousands and the millions, up to a billion.

Then it asks the question children love: what is the biggest number? Whatever number anyone names, a billion or something far bigger, you can always add one more, and that new number is bigger still. So there can't be a biggest counting number. The natural numbers never run out: mathematicians say there are infinitely many of them. It is one of the first big ideas in mathematics, and you can prove it with nothing more than adding one. This video goes with the One More, Forever lesson of Numbers Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00What is the biggest number?
2. 0:04Start at one. Add one more. And again.
3. 0:10Keep going, and the numbers race into the billions.
4. 0:15But name any number, and one more is bigger.
5. 0:21So there is no biggest one.
6. 0:25The counting numbers never end.