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How to Count on an Abacus

The Chinese abacus was first developed more than five thousand years ago. It consists of a series of vertical rods built into a rectangular frame. A horizontal crossbeam divides the frame into two unequal sections, known as the upper deck and lower deck. Each rod has two beads in the upper deck and five in the lower. A skilled abacus user can perform a wide range of mathematical calculations including multiplication, division and square roots.

Instructions

    • 1

      Set the abacus to zero by laying it on a flat surface and moving all the beads on the upper and lower decks away from the central crossbeam. Each column of beads represents a place value. The beads on the far right are units, the beads that are second from the right are tens followed by hundreds, thousands and so on. Each bead in the upper deck is worth five times the value of the bead in the lower part of the same column.

    • 2

      Raise one bead from the lower part of the units column up to the crossbeam. The abacus now reads "one".

    • 3

      Raise further beads from the same column, counting up by one unit at a time until you reach five. To continue counting, return the lower deck beads to the bottom of the frame and push down one of the beads on the upper deck. The abacus now reads "five".

    • 4

      Continue to push up beads from the lower deck until the count reaches ten. At this point all the beads in the units column can be returned to zero and a single bead raised in the tens column instead.

    • 5

      Continue counting by moving the appropriate beads. You are limited only by the number of columns on your abacus.


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