After 999

In your book, Maths Mela (Chapter 4), Gulnaz and Jaspreet keep count of everyone who comes to the langar. Each time a person comes, they cross off the next number on a number chart. They fill the chart all the way to 999. But more people keep coming! What comes after 999?

After 999 comes 1000, one thousand. Then the counting goes on: 1001, 1002, 1003, and so on. In the queue, after the 1000th person come the 1001st and the 1002nd. On their second chart, Gulnaz and Jaspreet crossed off numbers up to 1032. So 1032 people came for lunch.

Why is 1000 special? Think of Dienes blocks. 10 ones make 1 ten. 10 tens make 1 hundred. And 10 hundreds make 1 thousand. Each block is 10 times the one before it. When 999 gets one more, there are 10 ones, which make 1 ten. That gives 10 tens, which make 1 hundred. That gives 10 hundreds, which make 1 thousand: 1000.

1000 is written with 1 in the thousands place and 0 in the hundreds, tens and ones places. 1001 is 1 thousand, 0 hundreds, 0 tens and 1 one. We read it 'one thousand one'.