ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Suanpan

Hey there kiddo, do you know what a calculator is? Well, a suanpan (also known as an abacus) is just like a calculator, but it has beads that you can slide back and forth instead of buttons that you press.

Think of a suanpan as a wooden frame with some wooden sticks in it. You can slide small beads called counters up and down on the sticks to do math problems. Each stick represents a different place value, like ones, tens, hundreds, and so on. So, if you want to add 23 and 45, you would slide two beads on the tens stick and three beads on the ones stick and then slide four beads on the tens stick and five beads on the ones stick. Then, you add up the beads to get your answer, which is 68!

Using a suanpan can be a fun way to practice math and it doesn't need any batteries or electricity. Cool, right?
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