Using only pen, paper and his own brain, 82-year-old Willem Bouman from Alphen aan den Rijn has managed to solve a particularly difficult calculation. During the open day of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), he calculated the cube root of a number of 36 digits.
Door NU.nlBouman needed 8 minutes and 46 seconds for his attempt. According to the university, he is the first to ever achieve this.
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A cube root can be explained as follows: when you multiply a number by itself repeatedly, you get a power of this number, for example 9x9x9=729. In this example, the cube root is 9.
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The number that had to be calculated during the record attempt at TU/e was a lot more difficult: 718,237,140,592.542,803,123,253,912,561,466,729.
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Months of training for record attempt
Bouman explained to the audience afterwards that he first looks at the last four numbers. “Then I can immediately say what the last three digits of the answer are. There is a very clear structure in the numbers. I have been working on that in a compulsive way for seventy years.”
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The record attempt did not immediately go well. After an error due to nerves, Bouman was given a second chance. That went well. Fortunately, because he said he had trained for months before the record attempt.
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By the way, the correct answer was 895.548.862.009.
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