20 (number)
20 (twenty) is the natural number following 19 and preceding 21. A group of twenty units may also be referred to as a score.[1]
In mathematics
- 20 is the basis for vigesimal number systems.
- 20 is the third composite number comprising the product of a squared prime and a prime, and also the second member of the (22)q family in this form.
- 20 has an aliquot sum of 22 (110% in abundance). Accordingly, 20 is the third abundant number and demonstrates an 8 member aliquot sequence; {20, 22, 14, 10, 8, 7, 1, 0}.
- 20 is the smallest primitive abundant number.
- 20 is the 4th composite number in the 7-aliquot tree. Two numbers have 20 as their aliquot sum; the discrete semiprime 34 and the squared prime 361. Only 2 other square primes are abundant 12 and 18.
- An icosahedron has 20 faces. A dodecahedron has 20 vertices.
- 20 can be written as the sum of three Fibonacci Numbers uniquely, i.e. 20 = 13 + 5 + 2.
- The product of the number of divisors and the number of proper divisors of 20 is exactly 20.
- 20 is the number of quarter or half turns required to optimally solve a Rubik's cube in the worst case.
- 20 is the only number with more than one digit that can be written from base 2 to base 20 using only the digits 0 to 9.[2]
In science
Biology
- The number of proteinogenic amino acids that are encoded by the standard genetic code.
- In some countries, the number 20 is used as an index in measuring visual acuity. 20/20 indicates normal vision at 20 feet, although it is commonly used to mean "perfect vision" (Note that this applies only to countries using the Imperial system. The metric equivalent is 6/6). When someone is able to see only after an event how things turned out, that person is often said to have had "20/20 hindsight".
- There are 20 baby teeth in the deciduous dentition.
In religion
In sports
Age 20
- It is at this point that a person is no longer a teenager
- Twenty is the age of majority in Japanese tradition.
In currency
In films
- 20/20 is a late-night newsmagazine program on ABC-TV
- In the 1974 sci-fi film Dark Star, Exponential Thermostellar Bomb number 20 threatens to detonate in the Dark Star's bomb bay
- A 20-minute-long program of advertisements and trailers shown before some films playing in American movie theaters is called "The Twenty" (spelled "The 20wenty")
In games
- Twenty questions is a popular party game
- In the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons (as well as other RPGs that use twenty-sided dice), twenty-sided dice play a pivotal role in gameplay, and to "roll a twenty" is significant to the point that it is sometimes used in other, usually related, contexts, similar to the use of "doubles" in reference to Monopoly.
In music
In other fields
- The number of twenty can also be called a score (as Abraham Lincoln did in his Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King in his I Have a Dream speech).
- The Twenty Year Curse refers to the pattern of presidents of the United States who were elected to office in 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, and 1960 to die in office. This pattern ended with the 1980 presidency of Reagan, who survived his time in office and, notably, an attempted assassination.
- In the United States Constitution, $20 is the threshold value of civil disputes above which the right to trial by jury is preserved
- Yan Tan Tethera is a 20-word jingle for counting sheep
- The ordinal adjective is vicenary
- There are 20 ounces in Venti size coffees at Starbucks coffee shops.
20 is:
Historical years
20 A.D., 20 B.C., 1920, 2020, etc.
References
- ^ John H. Conway and Richard K. Guy, The Book of Numbers. New York: Copernicus (1996): 11. ""Score" is related to "share" and comes from the Old Norse "skor" meaning a "notch" or "tally" on a stick used for counting. ... Often people counted in 20s; every 20th notch was larger, and so "score" also came to mean 20."
- ^ Sequence A131646 in The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences