How many dollars does it take....?

How many dollars does it take....?

Continuing on the theme of my recent post on the difficulty of understanding scope of large numbers, a friend of mine published a compelling demonstration of the size of a Trillion Dollars:

  • With the latest round of Washington bailout money approaching a trillion dollars, here’s a way to visualize large sums of money assuming that the average dollar bill is 4 mils (0.004 inches) thick:
  • One million dollars is one million $1 bills. Lay them edge-to-edge and they would cover 2.57 acres of land.
  • One billion dollars would be the same as above but with a 4-inch tall stacks of dollar bills replacing each individual dollar bill.
  • One trillion dollars: Use the same 2.57 acres of land, but the stacks of one dollar bills would now be 333-feet tall.

This illustration is courtesy of the CGC Communicator
 published by Robert F. Gonsett for California Broadcasters

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