Over the years I have heard different sources try to show the
difference between a million, a billion and a trillion by using
distances (from here to the moon vs here to Saturn, etc, things like
that).  I can never quite get a handle on this because it's too
abstract.  Recently someone said they read in a column (Marilyn vos
Savant?) a description that used time in seconds, and years to show
it.  Can you find this for me?

ts

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Request for Question Clarification by juggler-ga on 11 Jan 2005 22:40 PST

Hi TS,

Does this quote (credited to the Economist magazine) meet your needs?

'"...Debt at the rate of $1 a second. To pay back $1 million, he
notes, would take just 12 days. To pay off $1 billion at the same pace
would take 32 years. And to pay off $1 trillion...32,000 years. These
figures are even more sobering when you
recall that our nation is only 200 years old."
Economist'
http://www.massagedepot.com/points.htm

Let me know what you think.

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Clarification of Question by timespacette-ga on 11 Jan 2005 23:06 PST

Hi juggler!

this was what I was looking for  . . . odd that it appears on
"massagedepot.com" . . .

now I'm wondering if it's really true?  are there any other places to
verify this?

being a bear of little brain when it comes to numbers, I am flummoxed
by all this . . .

anyway, you're on the right track

ts

Hi TS,

Yes, we can verify this... using the Google calculator...

Remember it was $1 per second, so...


60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 12 days = 1,036,800
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=60+*+60+*+24+*+12&btnG=Google+Search


60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year *
32 years = 1,009,152,000
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=60+*+60+*+24+*+365+*+32&btnG=Search


60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year *
32,000 years = 1,009,152,000,000
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=60+*+60+*+24+*+365+*+32000&btnG=Search

------------
search strategy:
rate second billion trillion 
billion seconds trillion "32000 years"

I hope this helps.

this is really great, thank you!

and thanks to ns2201 for the MegaPenny Project site

both juggler's explanation and the MegaPenny's visuals are excellent!

ts

Look at this the MegaPenny Project http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/default.asp

From the website: ?Visualizing huge numbers can be very difficult.
People regularly talk about millions of miles, billions of bytes, or
trillions of dollars, yet it's still hard to grasp just how much a
"billion" really is. The MegaPenny Project aims to help by taking one
small everyday item, the U.S. penny, and building on that to answer
the question: "What would a billion (or a trillion) pennies look
like?" Fun. Take a look.

This site goes beyone million and billion to google and beyond

Paul Getty once said that? If you can count your money you haven?t got
a billion?, which seems to fit in with your answer above.

Btw, just to confuse matters even more, over here in the low
countries, a billion (10^9) is known as a miljard.