The age of the universe isestimated to be 13.7 billion years. The United States national debt is currently just over 19 trillion dollars. We hear these HUGE numbers thrown out in daily conversations (yes, I have daily conversations about the age of the universe and so should you…) but does anyone really have a grip on what a BILLION or a TRILLION of anything really looks like?
Just for a refresher on how you get to a Trillion and beyond, recall from grade school the implications of adding three zeros after a “one”.1 = One
1,000 = Thousand
1,000,000 = Million
1,000,000,000 = Billion
1,000,000,000,000 = Trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000 = Quadrillion
OK, so what does a trillion look like? The problem with most answers to questions like this is that they try to it into perspective by relating it to things normal people have no perspective for. For instance, did you know that,
One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
I don’t know when the last time you traveled from the earth to the sun, much less traveled at the speed of sound in a jet, but for me those comparisons are just as mind-boggling as the concept of a trillion of something.
One Million Pennies
The Megapenny projectuses something a lot more common to most of us, a penny. Most people have a few in their pockets or in a jar on the bookshelf and it provides a much better sense of scale. Round up 16 of them, stack them on top of each other into a little pile and it’s one inch tall. Place them side by side in a line and they stretch out one foot.
So much for what’s in your pockets, now break open your piggy banks and gather up one million pennies, that’s only $10,000 of course. One million pennies creates a wall four feet wide, five feet tall and one foot thick. This wall weighs nearly 6,300 pounds, or just over three tons!
One Billion Pennies
Stepping up to a billion, things start to change as we start imagining stacks of pennies the size of a typical school bus. Five school buses to be exact.
As an interesting side-note, most European countries usea slightly different naming conventionfor large numbers and refer to our trillion, as a “thousand billion” they reserve the word trillion for a million billion or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Add another three zeros and we begin to enter into the realm of the age of the universe (in years) and the national debt (in dollars – not pennies). One trillion pennies would create a mind boggling cube with edges nearly as long as a football field. If only there were that many pennies in existence!
One Trillion Pennies
Current estimates by the U.S. Mintplace the number of pennies in circulation at around 140 billion. Others have estimated as many as 200 billion currently circulating. Since the first penny was minted in 1787, until present-day, over 300 billion pennies have been minted in the United States.
Of course the final step here is to image fourteen (14) of these cubes of pennies. Each penny representing one dollar of the national debt. The physical representation of large numbers is an interesting way to wrap your head around what it means to say something is in the billions or trillions, and beyond.
Of course, if pennies stacked up are just not doing it for you, head over toGlobal Researcherwhere they use 100 dollar bills in tidy little stacks to make the same point.
I found it interesting how small a package one million dollars turns out to be when made of bundles of $100 bills. It could fit in plastic grocery bag with ease!
FAQs
One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
What does the number 1 trillion look like? ›
1 trillion consists of 1 followed by 12 zeros, that is, 1, 000, 000,000, 000 and can be written as \(10^{12} \) (ten to the twelfth power).
What is an example of a trillion? ›
One trillion dollars is defined as one million dollars multiplied by a million, or one million million makes one trillion. Examples: Earth is about a trillion meters far from the Moon. The Galaxy contains about a trillion stars.
How much is a trillion dollars in $100 bills? ›
Answer: One trillion U.S. dollars in $100 notes would be 678 miles high. If they were 1 dollar bills, it would be 67,800 miles high. If it was our national debt of 34 trillion in $1 bills, the stack would be 2,305,000 miles high. Or to the moon 9.6 times.
Does anybody own $1 trillion dollars? ›
No individual has claimed the status of trillionaire just yet. But a net worth equal to at least one trillion in U.S. dollars or a similarly valued currency isn't unattainable, but it will be a couple of years yet. Only 18 countries have a GDP that exceeds that amount. The World Bank.
What can you buy with $1 trillion dollars? ›
What Could You Buy With $1 Trillion? One trillion dollars is enough money to buy up all the shares of ExxonMobil (XOM), McDonald's (MCD), and Coca-Cola (KO)—and still have billions left over.
How many trillionaires are there in the world? ›
At this time, there are currently no trillionaires in the world.
Does anyone on earth have 1 trillion dollars? ›
As of today, no billionaire is within striking distance of becoming a trillionaire. Elon Musk is, at present, the world's richest person, with a net worth of $206 billion, while Jeff Bezos is in the number two position with $179 billion, according to Bloomberg.
What is this number 1000000000000000000000000? ›
A thousand trillions is a quadrillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000. A thousand quadrillions is a quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.
What comes after a trillion in money? ›
We call 1,000,000 a million, 1,000,000,000 a billion, 1,000,000,000,000 a trillion, 1,000,000,000,000,000 a quadrillion, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 a quintillion, and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 a sextillion.
Answer and Explanation:
'Gazillion' is not a real number. Actually, it's not a number at all! 'Gazillion' is a word that is used to describe a large amount of something, such as 'There were a gazillion ants on the ice-cream cone I dropped.
Is a zillion a real number? ›
'Zillion' is not a real number. It's not actually the name of a number at all. People may say they have a 'zillion' things, but they are using this as a made-up adjective that means 'a huge amount. ' In mathematics, there is no number called a 'zillion.
What does $1 trillion dollars look like? ›
If you laid one billion dollars side by side like tile, they would cover about four square miles. A trillion dollars laid out the same way would cover approximately 3,992 miles, or 1,000 square miles larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
How much would it take to spend a trillion dollars? ›
It would take you more than 2,700 years to spend a trillion dollars, if you spent one million dollars every day. And if you had that much and spent one dollar per second, it would take more than 32,000 years to spend it all. Also, a trillion dollars in one-dollar bills would weigh 2.2 billion pounds.
How much space would a trillion dollars take? ›
This stack of cash - in $1 bills - would measure 67,866 miles, stretching approximately 2.72 times around the Earth's equator. If denominated in $100 bills, $1 trillion would be enough to fill 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools, with a total volume of 398,000 cubic feet.
How much space would 1 trillion dollars take up? ›
The area covered by 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) one dollar bills measures 3,992 square miles. This would cover an area equal to twice the size of the state of Delaware. The area covered by 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) one dollar bills measures 399,189 square miles.
What does 1 billion dollars look like in $100 dollar bills? ›
1 billion dollars in 100 dollar bills is 10 million individual bills. A single brand new bill is 0.0043 inches thick, so that would be a single pile of bills that is 43000 inches thick, which is he same as 3584 feet, or a pile that is 0.68 miles tall.
How much is 1 zillion? ›
Zillion sounds like an actual number because of its similarity to billion, million, and trillion, and it is modeled on these real numerical values. However, like its cousin jillion, zillion is an informal way to talk about a number that's enormous but indefinite.
Stepping up to a billion, things start to change as we start imagining stacks of pennies the size of a typical school bus. Five school buses to be exact.
Current estimates by the 