April 4, 2008

A Perspective on Quantity: One Trillion

To start...
A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.

A million dollars ago was five seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.

A trillion dollars is so large a number that only politicians
can use the term in conversation… probably because they
seldom think about what they are really saying. I’ve read that
mathematicians do not even use the term trillion!

Here is some perspective on TRILLION:
Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000.
The country has not existed for a trillion seconds.
Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.

Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000

To help out the perspective on one trillion, let the MegaPenny Project use a different approach. It uses a nice visual method to help us understand the sheer size of different numbers of pennies...from one to a trillion and all the way up to one quintillion. Even more...ever wonder how far up the numbers are named past the small trillion & quintillion? Find out here. Enjoy!

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