What does one TRILLION dollars look like?
All this talk about “stimulus packages” and “bailouts”…
A billion dollars…
A hundred billion dollars…
Eight hundred billion dollars…
One TRILLION dollars…
What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so my friend Mr Chay Kok Keon from Singapore took Google Sketchup out for a test drive to try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.
We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.
A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.
Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.
While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…
And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…
Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.
You ready for this? Spot the man standing in the left-hand corner 🙂
(And notice those pallets are double stacked)
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about :-p
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about :-p
Money is a paper value created in mind.
I never learnt the art of money-making and I am amazed how people earn.
When we think about something, there’s an image associated with it. Whether its words, names, phrases, places of course, we imagine it to be like something or the other. And there are certain things which we just say and never bother to delve/imagine deep enough. A trillion dollars seems like such a far away thing for us Indians but reading your post, that very instant, ‘a trillion dollars’ had an image and will remain so atleast as a great extrapolated imagination!!
Jai Gurudev.
Manjari.
Great Treat after a long time 🙂
WOW bhaiya that is some visual explanation…coooolll
Guruji I love you trillion, gazillion,, lion much
Nice – perspective… posting it on my blog (http://iyer-the-gr8.livejournal.com) as well – with your permission.
I never associate an image with money though I do it with all other things…. i really don’t why tats way I am made…..
But this is hilarious…can’t help but wonder at the imagination of your friend and taking pains to do this….
haha…Good One:-) I had never even bothered to think how so much of money would look like!!
Siddharth Sukhija
So where do the zeroes end ? 12, 18, 20 ?
Is it time to define Silly-on dollars ? Thats one followed any number of zeroes that you like. In your imagination.
wow.. thats a huge stack… 🙂
🙂 Interesting ! … 🙂
They say that the amount our corrupt politicians have stored in their Swiss bank accounts is so much more than 1 Trillion Dollars. Now wouldnt that be some visual if all that money was converted into Rupees and brought back to India. I guess if all the Rupee currency notes were burned to fuel an electric power station, it could power a city for a year.
now now how much is that in rupees..hmmmm 😀
Imagine if smiles were currency,
The world would be richer by the mile.
Definitely more happy and bright,
And certainly less fragile.
This is interesting
good one vikram. wanted to read your blog quite some time. But at last a good trillion dollar laugh.
good one. vikram. waiting to read more from you.
Hi Vikram, very interesting post. this link is going on my facebook.
Oh My God ! Thats just a LITTLE too much 😀
Must share with you guys that this past weekend I was in Indonesia; on the way there I changed 200 US$ to Indonesian rupiah — guess how much I got? Over two million!!
Laughed my head off and spent the weekend doing hectic divisions by 10000-odd even to buy a cup of coffee 🙂
V