How much?
August 2, 2011 (Tuesday)
The big debate in Washington has had a much-used word we are not accustomed to hearing: “Trillion.” How much is a trillion dollars?
A web site gives us the following information:
The height of a stack of 1,000 one dollar bills measures 4.3 inches.
The height of a stack of 1,000,000 one dollar bills measures 4,300 inches or 358 feet – about the height of a 30 to 35 story building.
The height of a stack of 100,000,000 (one hundred million) one dollar bills measures 35,851 feet or 6.79 miles. This would reach from the earth’s surface to the approximate altitude at which commercial jetliners fly.
The height of a stack of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) one dollar bills measures 358,510 feet or 67.9 miles. This would reach from the earth’s surface into the lower portion of the troposphere – one of the major outer layers of earth’s atmosphere.
The height of a stack of 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) one dollar bills measures 6,786.6 miles. A column of bills this high would extend 28 times higher than the orbiting International Space Station.
The height of a stack of 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) one dollar bills measures 67,866 miles. This would reach more than one fourth the way from the earth to the moon.
Hey, a trillion dollars is a lot of money!
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Click here for a web site that includes the above and more.
Click here for a graphic illustration.