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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th Maths Chapter 1 Opening page and Reading and writing large numbers — In-text Questions

Book page 1 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
When was the last time you went on a long trip? Where did you go? How did you travel? What was the duration of your trip? How much distance did you cover? Ask the elders who went with you to help you answer these questions.
Answer

This is about your own trip, so your answer will be your own. Here is how to find each piece of information.

  1. When: ask at home for the month and year of the trip.
  2. Where: the name of the place you went to.
  3. How: bus, train, car, boat, aeroplane — the vehicle you sat in.
  4. Duration: how long the travelling took. Count in hours, or in days if it was long.
  5. Distance: ask an elder, or look at the ticket. Distance is written in kilometres (km).
Sample answer: Last December my family went from Jaipur to Delhi. We went by train. The train took about 5 hours. The distance is about 300 km.
Try This: Write your five answers in a small table — When · Where · How · Duration · Distance. Then compare with a friend. Whose trip was longer in hours? Whose was longer in kilometres? They need not be the same trip.
Q2.
Do you know how many vehicles are currently there in your state?
Answer

Nobody can guess this correctly — it has to be looked up. The count runs into lakhs and crores, so it is a very big number.

Here is how to find it.

  1. Every vehicle in India must be registered with the Regional Transport Office (RTO) — the government office that gives number plates.
  2. Each state's transport department publishes the total. Your teacher can help you look it up.
  3. Write the number down and count its digits.
Sample answer: Uttar Pradesh has more than 4 crore registered vehicles. That number has 8 digits. My state's figure is ______ (fill in what you find).
Why it matters here: The chapter is about numbers that are too big to count on fingers. Vehicles in a state is one such number. In this chapter we will get comfortable with numbers up to 5 digits first.
Q3.
How do you write numbers to show several thousand objects?
Answer

You group the objects into thousands, and then write how many thousands you have, followed by what is left over.

Think of counting bricks at a building site.

  1. Make bundles of 1,000 bricks each.
  2. Count the bundles. Say you get 7 bundles.
  3. Count the loose bricks left over. Say 209 are left.
  4. Write the thousands first, then the rest: 7,209.
7 thousands + 2 hundreds + 0 tens + 9 ones
= 7,000 + 200 + 0 + 9
= 7,209
Tip: The comma in 7,209 is not decoration. It marks the end of the thousands. Everything to the left of the comma is counted in thousands.
Q4.
Let us start with 1,000. What numbers do we get when we keep adding a thousand? [1,000] [2,000] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [9,000]
Answer

Each new box is one thousand more than the box before it. The six empty boxes are:

1,000 → 2,000 → 3,000 → 4,000 → 5,000 → 6,000 → 7,000 → 8,000 → 9,000

Notice how easy it is to say them: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand … nine thousand.

Why it happens: Only the thousands digit is changing — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. The hundreds, tens and ones stay 0 the whole time, because we are adding whole thousands and nothing smaller.
Check it yourself: Count backwards from 9,000, taking away a thousand each time. You should land exactly on 1,000 after eight steps.
Q5.
What number do we get when we add a thousand to 9,000? We get ten thousand. How do we write this number?
Answer

We write it as 10,000.

9,000 + 1,000 = 10,000 (read as ten thousand)

It has five digits — a 1 followed by four zeros.

Why it happens: 9,000 already has 9 thousands. Adding one more makes 10 thousands. But the thousands column can hold only the digits 0 to 9. Ten thousands will not fit, so they are carried one step to the left into a brand new column — the ten thousands column, written TTh.
Tip: This is exactly what happened before. 9 ones + 1 one = 10. 90 + 10 = 100. 900 + 100 = 1,000. Each time the column filled up and a new column opened on the left.
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