108
108 is a composite number, even, a calendar year.
108 is sacred across Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism — arguably the most broadly revered number on earth. A mala, the prayer-bead string used for recitation, carries 108 beads. Major deities are honoured with 108 names. Buddhist tradition enumerates 108 kleshas, the defilements that bind a person to suffering.
It is a number you can hear as much as count. On New Year's Eve, Japanese temples toll the bell 108 times — Joya no Kane — one strike for each worldly desire to be let go before the year turns. Yoga practitioners mark the solstices with 108 sun salutations, and Ayurvedic medicine maps 108 marma points on the body.
Why 108? The explanations multiply, which is itself part of the appeal: 54 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet doubled for Shiva and Shakti; the astronomical near-coincidences that the Sun sits roughly 108 solar diameters from Earth and the Moon roughly 108 lunar diameters. Mathematically it is tidy in its own right — 108 = 1¹ × 2² × 3³ — and abundant. A regulation baseball, meanwhile, has exactly 108 double stitches, a fact with no spiritual content whatsoever, which is somehow the most 108 thing about 108.
Interestingness
Historical context — 108 AD
Calendar year
Year 108 (CVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
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Historical context — 108 BC
Calendar year
108 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar.
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Year facts
- Year type
-
Leap year
Divisible by 4 and not by 100; February has 29 days.
- Days in year
- 366
- ISO weeks
- 52
- Started on
-
Sunday
January 1, 108
- Ended on
-
Monday
December 31, 108
- Friday the 13ths
-
3
3 Friday the 13ths this year.
- Decade
-
100s
100–109
- Century
-
2nd century
101–200
- Millennium
-
1st millennium
1–1000
- Years ago
-
1,918
1918 years before 2026.
In other calendars
- Hebrew
-
3868 / 3869 AM
Rosh Hashanah falls in September/October.
- Chinese
-
Year of the zodiac:Earth zodiac:Monkey
Sexagenary cycle position 45 of 60. Lunar new year falls in late January / mid-February.
- Buddhist Era
-
651 BE
Counted from the parinirvana of the Buddha (Theravada / Thai / Sri Lankan convention).
- Ethiopian
-
100 / 101 ET
Year boundary at Enkutatash (September 11/12).
- Indian National (Saka)
-
30 / 29 Saka
Indian national calendar; year starts in March.
Cultural significance
The number of beads on a mala (prayer rosary); 108 names of major deities.
Considered the most auspicious number in Hindu tradition.
108 mortal desires / defilements (kleshas); 108 mala beads; Japanese New Year bell rung 108 times.
Sourced from Wikipedia (Numerology, Chinese numerology, Gematria, and per-culture articles).
Properties
Primality
Prime factorization: 2 2 × 3 3
Divisors & multiples
Sums & aliquot sequence
Continued fraction of √n
√108 = [10; (2, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 2, 20)]
Period length 8 — the block in parentheses repeats forever.
Representations
- In words
- one hundred eight
- Ordinal
- 108th
- Roman numeral
- CVIII
- Binary
- 1101100
- Octal
- 154
- Hexadecimal
- 0x6C
- Base64
- bA==
- One's complement
- 147 (8-bit)
- Scientific notation
- 1.08 × 10²
- As a duration
- 108 s = 1 minute, 48 seconds
As an angle
Historical numeral systems
- Babylonian (base 60)
- 𒁹 𒌋𒌋𒌋𒌋𒁹𒁹𒁹𒁹𒁹𒁹𒁹𒁹
- Egyptian hieroglyphic
- 𓍢𓏺𓏺𓏺𓏺𓏺𓏺𓏺𓏺
- Greek (Milesian)
- ρηʹ
- Mayan (base 20)
- 𝋥·𝋨
- Chinese
- 一百零八
- Chinese (financial)
- 壹佰零捌
Digit at this position in famous constants
- π — Pi (π)
- Digit 108 = 8
- e — Euler's number (e)
- Digit 108 = 9
- φ — Golden ratio (φ)
- Digit 108 = 8
- √2 — Pythagoras's (√2)
- Digit 108 = 4
- ln 2 — Natural log of 2
- Digit 108 = 8
- γ — Euler-Mascheroni (γ)
- Digit 108 = 4
Also seen as
Goldbach's conjecture says every even integer greater than 2 is the sum of two primes. For 108, here are decompositions:
- 5 + 103 = 108
- 7 + 101 = 108
- 11 + 97 = 108
- 19 + 89 = 108
- 29 + 79 = 108
- 37 + 71 = 108
- 41 + 67 = 108
- 47 + 61 = 108
Showing the first eight; more decompositions exist.
As an ASCII codepoint, 108 is l. Printable ASCII character l.
As an unsigned 32-bit integer, this is the IPv4 address 0.0.0.108.
- Address
- 0.0.0.108
- Class
- reserved
- IPv4-mapped IPv6
- ::ffff:0.0.0.108
Unspecified address (0.0.0.0/8) — "this network" placeholder.
Heard as a frequency, 108 Hz is closest to:
- Concert pitch (A4 = 440 Hz): A2 (110 Hz, -32¢)
- Scientific pitch (C4 = 256 Hz): A2 (107.6 Hz, +6¢)
- Baroque pitch (A4 = 415 Hz): A♯2 (109.9 Hz, -30¢)
As a MIDI note number, 108 is C8 (4186 Hz at concert pitch) — the highest note on a standard 88-key piano.
On the periodic table, atomic number 108 is Hassium (Hs) — period 7.
Related reading
- Babylonian numerals — The base-60 cuneiform system that gave us 60 minutes, 60 seconds, and 360°.