How many heartbeats in a life?
Your heart is a pump that started work before you were born and hasn't taken a single holiday since. It's the most underrated machine you own.
~100,000 beats a day37 million a year~3 billion in a life
The question: Roughly how many times will it beat over an 80-year life?
the result
≈ 3 billion heartbeats
A resting pulse is about 70 beats per minute. Count up from there: minutes per hour, hours per day, days per year.
Work it out
- 70 × 60 = 4,200 beats per hour.
- × 24 ≈ 100,000 beats per day.
- × 365 ≈ 37 million beats per year.
- × 80 ≈ 3 billion beats in a lifetime.
About 3 billion beats — more heartbeats in one life than there are people on Earth.
What it teaches
A chain of multiplications (rate → day → year → lifetime) turns an unimaginable number into a one-line calculation you can do on an envelope.