40 (forty) is the natural number following 39 and preceding 41. In English, forty is the only number whose constituent letters appear in alphabetical order.
In mathematics
Forty is an
octagonal number, and as the sum of the first four
pentagonal numbers, it is a
pentagonal pyramidal number. It is a
Harshad number.
Given 40, the Mertens function returns 0. 40 is the smallest number n with exactly 9 solutions to the equation φ(x) = n.
Forty is the number of n-queens problem solutions for n = 7.
40 is a repdigit in base 3 (1111).
In science
Astronomy
In religion
The number 40 is significant in
Jewish,
Christian and
Islamic traditions.
- "Forty days and forty nights" describes the period for which rain fell during Noah's flood
- According to the Midrash, Moses spent three consecutive periods of "forty days and forty nights" on Mount Sinai:
- He went up on the seventh day of Sivan, after God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, in order to learn the Torah from God, and came down on the seventeenth day of Tammuz, when he saw the Jews worshipping the Golden Calf and broke the tablets
- He went up on the eighteenth day of Tammuz to beg forgiveness for the people's sin and came down without God's atonement on the twenty-ninth day of Av
- He went up on the first day of Elul and came down on the tenth day of Tishrei, the first Yom Kippur, with God's atonement
- Rabbi Akiva, the greatest expositor of the Oral Torah, only began learning how to read Hebrew when he was 40 years old
- A mikvah consists of 40 se'ah (approximately 200 gallons) of water
- "Forty days and forty nights" was the period Jesus spent in the wilderness.
- In modern Western Christian practice, Lent consists of the 40 days preceding Easter.
- The dead are usually mourned for forty days in Muslim cultures
- Some Russians believe that ghosts of the dead linger at the site of their death for forty days
In other fields
Forty is also:
- in the maxim "Life begins at forty"
- in the expression "forty winks", meaning a short sleep
- the distance run in the 40 yard dash in American football scouting
- A song by Dave Matthews Band
- the number of years of marriage as the ruby wedding anniversary
- the code for direct dial international phone calls to Romania
- the number in the designation of:
- the title of a song by U2
- "40 Feet" is the title of a song by Franz Ferdinand
- The band Crush 40
- in the title of the Food Network show a Day" target="_blank" >*
- in the name of WD-40, a spray lubricant
- in the name of the food additive FD & C Red Dye #40, commonly known as "Red 40" *
- the 40 ounce size used for liquor, typically fairly cheap malt beer; a person sometimes "pours a forty on the curb", i.e., pours out said bottle onto the street, in memory of a person who has died
- the number of thieves in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, from Thousand and One Nights (both the numbers 40 and 1001 are more likely to mean "many" than to indicate a specific number)
- the number of hours in a regular workweek in Western countries
- the classic Russian vodka is alcohol content 40 percent by volume
- the jersey number of Pat Tillman, which was retired by the Arizona Cardinals
- the number of wires in a Parallel ATA-cable
- Form 1040 (referred to as a "ten-forty") is a standard Internal Revenue Service form used to file for federal taxes
- UB40 is a form for those claiming unemployment benefits in the United Kingdom. The band UB40 was named after this form
- the year A.D. 40, 40 BC, or (for example) 1940
See also
Integers
Quaranta | 40 (tal) | Vierzig | Cuarenta | Kvardek | 40 (nombre) | 40 | 40 | Quaranta | 40 (skaičius) | 40 (getal) | 40 | Quaranta | 40 (tall) | Quarenta | 40 (число) | 40 (število) | 40 (tal) | 40 | 40