Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure “trillion” has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion – “if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spend a trillion dollars”.
Another mathematician puts it like this: “1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years“.
Now if the above comparisons weren’t really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field – the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner.
Related: Visualize Units of Measurement
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
Tags: Archives, number, visualization, Internet
Reader Comments
Wow! That’s a lot for comparison. I’ve always wondered what trillions and billions would seem like. Nice post.
Written by Michael on 03.09.09
Wow.. Very nice comparison with interesting illustrating pictures.. Never thought money would grow like that.
But then again the debt is of the whole country and when divided by population it will come down. Here 1trillion by 300 million will be 3000 dollars per American. That is 1/3 of the first illustration. We can easily visualize this.
Written by Change Your Life for Better on 03.10.09
There is only one problem? There is only 1000 pallets on the last image? if on Billion is 10 pallets and one TRILLION is 1000 times more, then there should be 10,000 pallets… right? correct me if im wrong… but the last image should be 20 pallets high instead of 2?
Written by Sten Hög on 03.10.09
Not to worry. Obama says we can make the payments on the loan (as soon as China buys us.)
Written by Gospacho Holstein on 03.12.09