9 x 100 = 900
9 times 100 is 900. Shift the 9 two columns left, or take the easier route and subtract 100 from 1000. Both land on nine hundred, and 900 has a few properties worth knowing.
9 × 100 = 900
Adding 9 to itself 100 times gives the same answer.
Two ways to get there
Multiplying by 100 moves the 9 two columns to the left, from units to hundreds, with two zeros filling in behind it: 900.
If shifting digits feels fiddly, go the other way. Ten hundreds is 1000, so nine hundreds is one hundred less: 1000 – 100 = 900. Every multiple of 9 can be reached like this, by taking one lot away from the round ten above it.
900 is a square number
9 is 3 x 3 and 100 is 10 x 10, so their product is a square as well, with root 3 x 10 = 30. That gives 30 x 30 = 900. There is a second signature too: the digits of any multiple of 9 add up to a multiple of 9, and here 9 + 0 + 0 = 9.
900 as a quantity
900 seconds is exactly 15 minutes, a quarter of an hour, because 15 x 60 = 900. And 900 degrees is two and a half full turns — 360 + 360 + 180 — which is where the skateboarding trick called a 900 gets its name. Both are handy sanity checks: if a figure of 900 seconds or 900 degrees does not come out as a clean quarter hour or two and a half spins, the arithmetic went wrong somewhere earlier.
The pages either side
- 8 x 100 = 800
- 9 x 100 = 900
- 100 x 100 = 10000
- 90 x 100 = 9000, ten times this answer