Visualizing a trillion
May. 4th, 2009 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleThis is kind of alarming:
The Econ4u folks are dedicated to education Americans about all matters financial. To dramatize the importance of their mission, they put a poll into the field asking people how many millions are in a trillion. The results:
Q: How many times larger is a trillion than a million? Would you say…
One Thousand Times- 18%
Ten Thousand Times- 12%
One Hundred Thousand Times- 21%
One Million Times- 21%
Ten Million Times- 17%
Don’t Know- 12%
The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it wrong downward.
LOL. I was just thinking lately about ways to visualize a trillion.
Imagine a very small pebble, or alternately a large grain of sand, one millimeter on a side. (That's about 1/25th of an inch.)
If you place them side by side along the edge of a typical office desk, you have about a thousand pebbles.
If you completely cover the surface of the desk, you have about a million pebbles.
If you completely fill the volume of the desk, you have about a billion pebbles.
If you completely fill a 3,000 square foot home up to the very peak of the roof, you have about a trillion pebbles.
It's a big number, but not so big that you can't relate it to familiar objects.
Incidentally, it's also (very) roughly the total number of pixels in an uncompressed, high-resolution, feature length film.
The Econ4u folks are dedicated to education Americans about all matters financial. To dramatize the importance of their mission, they put a poll into the field asking people how many millions are in a trillion. The results:
Q: How many times larger is a trillion than a million? Would you say…
One Thousand Times- 18%
Ten Thousand Times- 12%
One Hundred Thousand Times- 21%
One Million Times- 21%
Ten Million Times- 17%
Don’t Know- 12%
The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it wrong downward.
LOL. I was just thinking lately about ways to visualize a trillion.
Imagine a very small pebble, or alternately a large grain of sand, one millimeter on a side. (That's about 1/25th of an inch.)
If you place them side by side along the edge of a typical office desk, you have about a thousand pebbles.
If you completely cover the surface of the desk, you have about a million pebbles.
If you completely fill the volume of the desk, you have about a billion pebbles.
If you completely fill a 3,000 square foot home up to the very peak of the roof, you have about a trillion pebbles.
It's a big number, but not so big that you can't relate it to familiar objects.
Incidentally, it's also (very) roughly the total number of pixels in an uncompressed, high-resolution, feature length film.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 06:30 am (UTC)No one has ever offered me 1 trillion kisses.