When you’re shuffling a deck of cards, you’re trying your best to ensure everything gets as mixed up as possible. But it turns out you might not have to try so hard. In this wonderful TedEd animation, Yannay Khaikin outlines the staggering number of ways a deck of 52 cards can be arranged.
But just how staggering are we talking? It turns out there are 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (67 zeros) ways to arrange a deck of 52 cards. And as Khaikin explains, “Any time you pick up a well shuffled deck, you are almost certainly holding an arrangement of cards that has never before existed and might not exist again.” Amazing. [YouTube via The Awesomer]