You know, it is, it's funny how we go through
our days completely surrounded by these invisible
rulers. Oh, absolutely. Like just think about
your morning. You look at your phone and you
see that little battery icon hit 100 % and I
mean instantly. your shoulders drop, you feel
safe. Right. You know your device isn't going
to just die on you during your commute. Exactly.
Or, you know, you step outside and someone says
it's going to be 100 degrees out today, and you
immediately know it's an absolute scorcher. Yeah,
or even going back to when you were a kid. Oh,
getting 100 on a spelling test. Yes. You felt
like you were totally flawless. It's the best
feeling. But we interact with this specific number,
100, every single day of our lives. But we...
we rarely stop to consider why. Like, why does
this one specific integer command so much authority
in the way we view the world? It's just so ubiquitous
that it becomes essentially invisible. We don't
question it. We just accept it as the ultimate
finish line. It's like it's the ceiling of our
everyday experiences. And that is exactly our
mission for you today. Welcome to our deep dive.
We are taking a magnifying glass to a single
remarkably dense topic today. We're looking at
the Wikipedia article for the number 100. Which
sounds simple, but it really isn't. Not at all.
We're going to look at why this specific number
sits on the throne of our numerical universe.
And trust me, the reasons go way beyond basic
math. Yeah. To set the tone for you as we get
started, it is crucial to understand that this
exploration isn't just about digits on a chalkboard.
It is really a story about human psychology.
We are looking at how a simple integer became
human society's absolute benchmark for perfection,
for completion, and for value. OK, let's unpack
this, starting right at the bedrock of our modern
world, which is math and measurement. The foundation
of it all. Exactly. The number 100 is the square
of 10. 10 times 10. It's this massive base 10
powerhouse. And think about why base 10 feels
so naturally solid to us. Because of our hands.
Exactly. We have 10 fingers. Early human counting
was inherently tied to our own biology. So 10
squared 100 feels like the ultimate realization
of our natural counting system. It just makes
sense to our primate brains. It really does.
And from that biological and mathematical foundation,
100 became the basis for percentages. I mean,
the word percent itself comes from the Latin
percentum. Literally translates to by the hundred
right when you tell someone you're giving a hundred
percent effort You were telling them you are
providing a full complete amount. There's nothing
left in the tank It's the whole pie and and it
doesn't stop at just percentages That feeling
of completeness is baked into how we measure
the physical world to oh the entire metric system
relies on it Yeah, you have a hundred centimeters
making up a meter you have the standard si prefix
Hector which designates a factor of 100 I always
think of the number 100 like the VIP bouncer
of numbers. A VIP bouncer? Yeah, like it sets
the standard for what gets into the club of completeness.
If you don't hit 100, you are just a fraction.
You're still waiting in line outside. That is
a great analogy. And that gatekeeping role is
perfectly illustrated in how we measure temperature.
Oh, the Celsius scale. Particularly with the
Celsius scale. But the history of that scale
is actually quite surprising. This completely
threw me for a loop when I read the source. Yeah.
Because we all grow up learning that 100 degrees
Celsius is the boiling point of water. Right.
And zero degrees is the freezing point. And it
feels clean, neat, naturally perfect. But Anders
Celsius, the astronomer who actually invented
the scale in the 1740s, he originally defined
100 degrees as the freezing point. And zero degrees
is the boiling point. It is wild. He had the
entire thermometer completely inverted compared
to how we use it today. Just imagine checking
the weather and seeing temperature going up to
80 degrees and realizing that means you need
to put on a heavy winter coat because you're
approaching freezing. It hurts my brain just
thinking about it. It really does. And it wasn't
until a couple of years later, shortly after
Celsius actually died, that the taxonomist Carl
von Linnae reversed the scale to the modern standard
we use today. And I want to push back a little
here. This makes me want to push back on this
idea of 100 being this naturally perfect universal
standard. Oh, so? Well, if the guy who invented
the scale originally had 100 as the freezing
point, doesn't that prove how completely arbitrary
our so -called perfect benchmarks actually are?
Like we just decided one day to flip the numbers
because it felt better. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, it absolutely proves how
arbitrary it is, but it also reveals something
really fundamental about the human brain. What
do you mean? Well, we exist in a highly chaotic
universe. Temperatures fluctuate wildly. Physical
distances are vast and incomprehensible. Humans
crave these base 10 anchors to make that chaos
feel orderly and quantifiable. Oh, I see. Yeah.
Linnae likely flipped the Celsius scale because
intuitively, Humans associate the number 100
with a maximum state. With high energy. Exactly.
Boiling water at 100 feels vastly more psychologically
correct to us than freezing water at 100. We
essentially molded the physical world to fit
our preferred mathematical anchor. We really
do mold the world to fit that number, which actually
leads us right into biology and nature, because
we don't just do this with temperature. We project
this perfect number onto living things that do
not naturally fit the mold at all. We want 100
to be everywhere, even when nature just flat
out refuses to cooperate. Case in point. The
centipede. Oh, the centipede is a classic example.
Right. The word centipede falls under the zoological
group Ketopoda. Centi means hundred. Pide means
foot. It literally translates to 100 feet. But
centipedes do not actually have exactly 100 legs.
Not even close. In fact, according to the source,
they were categorized as having anywhere from
15 to 191 pairs of legs. The centipede is basically
nature's version of false advertising. What's
fascinating here is how humans handled that specific
chaotic range. Because 15 to 191 pairs of legs
is wildly variable. It's a huge spread. Huge.
And yet, instead of calling it a variable ped
or a mini -ped, whoever named it looked at this
scurrying creature and just rounded to the nearest
satisfying baseline. They just needed a clean
number. The human brain wanted a clean, dramatic
number to convey a whole lot of legs and a hundred
was waiting right there. We just slap the label
on the bug and call it a day. Pretty much. But
it goes beyond just naming things, right? We
actually use 100 as an invented scientific baseline
to measure completely unrelated things, like
take dietary protein. Ah, yes. There's a metric
called the biological value of a protein. This
is a really crucial metric in nutrition science.
Biological value basically measures how well
the protein you consume from food is actually
absorbed and incorporated into the proteins of
your own body. Right. And scientists needed a
baseline to compare all these different foods
against the... So what did they do? They took
the chicken egg. They took the egg and they arbitrarily
set its biological value at exactly 100. Just
drew a line in the sand. Literally. Then every
other protein on Earth like beef, soy, way is
evaluated relative to the egg. But why 100? I
mean, it's not like the egg is some perfect mathematical
absolute. They just needed a clean number to
make the comparative math easier for every other
food on the planet. It becomes the ultimate comparative
tool. In early nutrition science, you couldn't
just look at protein in a vacuum. You needed
a measuring stick for human absorption. Right,
something practical. And the egg was highly efficient,
so pinning it at 100 avoids using messy decimal
fractions to measure everything else. We round
up, we round down, or we entirely invent a baseline
like the egg, just so we can utilize that satisfying
three -digit number. It is all about the psychology
of that number. Exactly. And you see this exact
same psychological need for a clean baseline
in technology, too. HTTP status codes when you
were browsing the web right when your computer
talks to a website server There's this invisible
digital handshake that has to happen HTTP status
code 100 is the specific signal that tells a
client browser to continue with its request It
is the foundation of the communication. So it
basically says I am listening Everything is functioning
perfectly. Keep talking. Precisely. Similarly,
in the early days of networking, 100 megabits
per second became the definitive speed standard
for fast Ethernet. I said that magic number again.
Early computer engineers relied on the number
100 as a signal of trust, a sign that a system
is whole, stable, and working at peak capacity.
So we see computer engineers relying on 100 as
a signal of trust. And I think that psychological
need for wholeness and trust is exactly why we
use it. to measure the thing we rely on most
in our daily societal interactions. Our money.
Our money. Almost every major global currency
is divided into 100 subunits. The economic weight
of the number 100 is profound. It really is.
One euro is broken down into 100 cents. One British
pound sterling is made up of 100 pence. And in
the United States? Yeah. The largest bank note
currently in circulation is the $100 bill. The
Benjamin. featuring Benjamin Franklin. It's the
ultimate symbol of having cash. And dividing
currencies into a hundred subunits is not a strict
mathematical necessity at all. Really? No, historically,
currencies were often divided into 12 or 20 parts.
Think of the old British system with shillings
and pence. Oh, right. Dividing by 12 is actually
incredibly practical for trade, because you can
easily divide a shilling into halves, thirds,
or quarters without getting a messy fraction.
That actually makes a lot of sense for a merchant.
But moving to a decimal system, dividing a currency
into 100 cents, creates a psychological sense
of a completed progress bar for the consumer.
A progress bar. That is exactly what it feels
like. Right. When you accumulate 100 cents, your
brain registers that you have achieved a complete
whole unit. It's that VIP bouncer again, letting
you into the club of a whole dollar. And you
see this prestige outside of money, too. Like,
look at the world of sports. Oh, the 100 meter
sprint. Yes. It is widely considered one of the
most prestigious Olympic events in the world.
Which makes me wonder, and I want to pose this
to you. Sure. Is the 100 meter sprint so highly
regarded just because it's a grueling, explosive
physical distance that requires ultimate athletic
exertion? Or is it because winning a race that
happens to have the number 100 attached to it
carries a deeper psychological weight of absolute
perfection? I mean, it is almost certainly the
psychological weight. You think so? Definitely.
Historically, track distances varied wildly based
on the size of the specific stadium or field
being used. But standardizing the premier sprinting
event on exactly 100 meters creates a mythic
quality. It's just a... Clean, perfect number.
Right. It's about 10 seconds of explosive, maximum
human power. But if that exact same physical
exertion happened over a 97 -meter race or a
103 -meter race, it simply wouldn't hold the
same cultural reverence. People wouldn't care
as much. Exactly. The number elevates the physical
act. And if you want the ultimate modern proof
of how 100 has completely transcended math and
physical measurement to become a cultural synonym
for absolute excellence, you just have to look
at how we communicate today. Oh, you mean the
100 emoji? Yes. The bright red double underlined
100. The O emoji. We use it constantly in digital
culture to represent something that is authentic
or excellent or just perfect. People say keep
it 100. Right. Meaning to stay completely true
to yourself. You don't tell someone to keep it
99. Never. The number has evolved linguistically
to become a symbol for absolute truth and maximum
effort. OK, here's where it gets really interesting,
though, because we have spent this entire time
talking about human constructs, right? and society.
Yeah. Human money, human sports, human emojis,
human invented protein scales. It makes it sound
like 100 is just a totally random integer that
happens to have a really good PR team. That's
a funny way to put it. But if we strip all of
that human bias away, like if we take away our
culture and our obsession with counting on our
10 fingers, The number 100 actually possesses
intrinsic, almost magical mathematical properties.
The pure mathematics of 100 are staggering. They
really are. Once you dig into the structural
logic of the number itself, you start to see
why it feels so special to us. Let's walk through
some of these because they genuinely blew my
mind when we were prepping for this. Let's start
with prime numbers. Okay, primes. So a prime
number is a number that is only divisible by
one and itself. So numbers like 2, 3, 5, 7, and
11. Right. If you take the first nine prime numbers
in existence, all the primes from 2 through 23,
and you add them together, the sum is exactly
100. Just perfectly 100, yeah. 2 plus 3 plus
5 plus 7 plus 13 plus 17 plus 19 plus 23 equals
exactly 100. It is a beautiful symmetry, but
the relationship with primes goes even further.
Oh yeah, tell them about the division part. So
how many prime numbers exist below the number
100? There are exactly 25 primes. Okay. And what
happens when you divide 100 by that exact number
of primes beneath it? 100 is perfectly divisible
by 25. It equals exactly 4. It's just so clean.
And it gets even wilder when we look at the sum
of the cubes. This is a great one. If you take
the first four positive integers, 1, 2, 3, and
4, if you cube them, meaning you multiply each
number by itself three times and add them up,
they hit our magic number. Let's do the math.
1 cubed is 1. 2 cubed is 8. 3 cubed is 27. 4
cubed is 64. 1 plus 8 plus 27 plus 64 adds up
to exactly 100. Which brings us to something
called Nicomachus' theorem. Okay, yes. Break
this down. This is one of my favorite mathematical
connections to explain because it feels like
a magic trick, but it is pure logic. I love that.
Nicomachus' theorem states that the sum of the
cubes of the first n numbers is equal to the
square of the sum of those exact same numbers.
Wait, wait. Walk me through what that actually
looks like in practice. Okay, take those same
four numbers. One, two, three, and four. We just
established that if you cube them and add them
together, you get 100. Now, instead of cubing
them, just add them together normally. One plus
two plus three plus four equals 10. Now, square
that result. 10 squared is 100. Wow. So the sum
of their cubes perfectly mirrors the square of
their sum. To me, looking at these interlocking
properties, it's like a cosmic math puzzle. clicking
perfectly into place. It makes you feel like
math is something we discover out in the universe,
rather than something we just invented in a classroom.
That is the core of it, really. We can talk all
day about how arbitrary the Celsius scale is,
or how we force the centipede's name, but the
elegance of pure mathematics underpins the natural
order of the universe. It's beyond us. Exactly.
Being the sum of the first nine primes, or resting
perfectly inside Nicomachus' theorem. These aren't
human inventions. They are fundamental properties
of logic, and 100 is uniquely situated at the
crossroads of all these patterns. The Wikipedia
article goes into some incredibly dense classifications
as well. Things like harshad numbers and Euler
totions. But there was one that really stood
out to me as another beautiful puzzle, and that
was Leyland numbers. Oh, yes. Leyland numbers
are a great example of this hidden elegance.
A Leyland number is what you get when you take
two integers, raise them to each other's powers,
and then add the results together. So how does
that work for 100? So to get 100, you take the
numbers 2 and 6. 2 to the power of 6 is 64. 6
to the power of 2 is 36. Add 64 and 36 together,
and you get exactly 100. It is just endless.
perfect symmetry. It is a mathematical playground
and I think that is why human beings instinctively
recognized its importance. Even before we knew
all the math. Definitely. Long before we understood
advanced theorems or Leyland numbers. Early humans
probably sensed that 10 squared was a remarkably
stable and elegant plateau. We chose 100 as our
societal benchmark because mathematically, it
actually deserves the crown. Which makes the
historical plot twist in our source material
so absolutely shocking. Quite the curveball.
Because after establishing all this absolute
undeniable mathematical perfection, the deep
dive delivers a massive wrench in the gears.
Historically, 100 wasn't always a fixed integer.
This raises an important question about how human
civilization actually developed and just how
messy our history really is. Wait, wait, wait.
You're telling me 100 wasn't always 100? Not
at all. Because the source notes that in medieval
contexts, the Germanic and English use of the
word hundred could actually refer to what they
called the long hundred. A long hundred, yes.
And the long hundred was six score. A score is
20. So 6 times 20 is 120. Right. When medieval
people said 100, they frequently meant 120. To
differentiate, they had to specifically describe
our modern 100 as the short 100, or five score.
I mean, doesn't a long 100 of 120 completely
undermine everything we just discussed about
its perfect base 10 nature? It does undermine
the base 10 nature, but it perfectly illustrates
the friction between pure math and practical
human language. How so? We like to think of mathematics
and language as these perfectly aligned logical
systems that grew up holding hands. But in reality,
language and mathematics evolved on parallel
but incredibly messy tracks. Messy is an understatement.
Imagine trying to buy groceries today and having
to ask the cashier if they are using the short
or long hundred. It would be chaos. We take for
granted that numbers are absolute truths today,
but for centuries, your hundred could have literally
meant 120 depending on what town you were standing
in. Exactly. And the reason for this goes back
to how people actually lived and worked. In early
Germanic and medieval English societies, trade
and grouping items often relied on 12s or 20s.
Oh, like the currency we talked about earlier.
Right. Think about how we still buy eggs by the
dozen or pencils by the gross, which is a dozen
dozens. Yeah, that makes sense. The actual word
hundred started out as a conceptual grouping.
It was just a linguistic way to say a very large
standard batch of goods rather than a strict
mathematical absolute. So a merchant selling
fish might count them out in groups of 20 or
a score. And handing over six groups of 120 fish
was just their standard large batch. Precisely.
A long hundred. of 120 made practical, everyday
sense for merchants counting by dozens or scores.
It proves that our modern, rigid, standardized
definition of numbers, where the word 100 strictly
and only means 10 squared, is a relatively modern
luxury. It took centuries of standardization
for the pure, elegant math we discussed earlier
to finally conquer the practical, linguistic
habits of medieval traders. So what does this
all mean? We started this deep dive wondering
Why 100 is the VIP bouncer of our numerical lives?
And the journey to answer that has taken us all
over the map. It really has. We've gone from
the freezing point of water in Sweden to the
number of legs scurrying on a centipede. We've
seen its staggering mathematical elegance, the
sums of primes and cubes and Leyland numbers
that make it a naturally occurring masterpiece
of logic. Which is just beautiful. And we've
seen its biological misnumbers, where we just
force nature and nutrition science to fit our
favorite round number. And we've seen its absolute
psychological grip on our society. From the Benjamin
in your wallet to the 100 meter sprint on your
television down to the ovemoji you text your
friends. It is the ultimate benchmark, even if
it took our ancestors a while to finally decide
between the short hundred and the long hundred
at the market. So for you listening, the next
time you look down at your phone. and feel that
wave of relief seeing a 100 % charged battery,
or you send that Red Thaw emoji in a group chat,
take a second. Really think about it. Remember
that you are participating in a massive, rich
history. You are touching medieval language quirks,
pure mathematical geometry, and deeply arbitrary
human psychology. all rolled into one three -digit
package. And I want to leave you with one final
thought to mull over, drawing from a small detail
in the science section of our material. Oh, that's
a... We talked about 100 in biology and physics,
but we didn't mention chemistry. On the periodic
table, the atomic number 100 belongs to an element
called fermium. Fermium, okay. What is fascinating
about fermium is that it is a purely synthetic
chemical element. It does not occur naturally
in the Earth's crust. It was created by humans
in a lab. a completely synthetic element sitting
at the most mathematically perfect number. Yes.
So as humanity moves into a future where we increasingly
synthesize our own elements, build our own digital
realities, and expand beyond our earthly origins,
you have to wonder, will the number 100 remain
our ultimate organic benchmark of completion?
Or, in a vast universe that doesn't actually
care about human fingers or base 10 math, is
our obsession with 100 just a temporary milestone.
When we finally step out into the cosmos, will
our invisible ruler still measure up?