How an abacus work

The abacus is an old Asian tool for calculations that is still used in schools today, as it has proven itself a very useful tool when developing your math skills. Its based on a top section and a bottom section with columns of beads. The top beads in the top section has a value of 5, 50, 500 and so on for each column, going from right to left. The beads in the bottom section have values of 1, 10, 100, etc.

The user of the abacus can easily perform addition and subtraction of large numbers, with different types of methods. And with some practice the user will eventually not need the abacus itself at all as the calculations are done on a mental abacus.

With further training multiplication, division and even methods of solving cube roots are possible with the abacus. And children that are taught the abacus get extraordinary math skills at a very young age, which can be seen in this film clip:

The abacus also comes with two different layouts: classical (Suanpan) or modern (Soroban).