Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. It’s sheer coincidence, of course, but still fun.
Warning: Nerd story commences.
I discovered it by accident. I was reviewing a technical book, in which the author kept using the number 108, where many programmers would use, say, 42. When trying to figure out why that odd (or rather even) choice, I noticed that it was 22 × 33, which I extended to 11 × 22 × 33 for its elegance.
I went on to 4, but 27648 didn’t have any ring to it. However at 5, I saw immediately that it was the number of milliseconds in a day. Some silly high school prompt had told us to imagine we were give $86,400 every day, but could only use it that day, it reset the next morning; how would we use it? It was supposed to be a surprise when we found out that this represented seconds in a day, but the unusual number immediately made me search for the reason, and I wrote an answer that kept hinting about time and seconds; I managed to amuse the teacher and myself, even it classmates thought I was a dweeb. I never forgot that number, and adding the zeroes at the end was a no-brainer.
I asked the writer of that technical book about it, and while he responded to other comments, I never heard back about 108. However I learned a new party trick. “Do you know how many milliseconds there are in a day?”
Nerd story complete. We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussions.
