Abacus Chinese abacus - Central Michigan …（Abacus中国算盘u2014u2014中央密歇根u2026）.pdfVIP

Abacus • An abacus is kind of like a counting board, but rather than having loose rocks, beads, or pebbles, an abacus has beads that slide on wires. • The most commonly known abacus today is the Chinese abacus, called the suanpan, which looks like the one in the figure above. It was invented around 1300 A.D. • Abaci are still commonly used today in China. School children are taught how to use one when learning arithmetic. Everyone has one in their homes. • One of the most prominent articles of business equipment in Chinese offices today is an abacus. • The Chinese are very dependent on the abacus for doing arithmetic, and often find it “awkward to make even simple calculations without one”. • Abaci are very efficient and can be used for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square roots, and cube roots. • A Chinese abacus has five beads on the bottom and two on the top per decimal place. This is more than necessary for a base-10 system (as we will see) but allows for simpler algorithms. It can also be used for computing in a hexadecimal (base-16) system. Japanese abacus • The Japanese later modified the Chinese abacus, during the 1500s A.D. They first eliminated one bead from the upper section. They then removed a bead from the lower section as well. • Because of the removal of the beads, the Japanese abacus can only be used with a base- 10 number system. • The Japanese abacus, called a soroban, usually has more rods, which allows for more digits to be represented, or for more than one number to be represented at a time. • The beads on a Japanese abacus are often double-cone shaped to allow for easier movement. • The abacus is generally taught in primary school in Japan, because it is a