Thursday, October 20, 2011

QUESTION YOUR WORLD: So, exactly, how big is a BILLION?

Billion by ScienceMuseumofVA


How big is a billion?

Well, lets count:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, errr...999,999,998...999,999,999..1,000,000,000!! Whew!! Took a bit longer than we thought. A billion is a huge number!! If you were to count from one to a billion you would need nearly 96 years! Keep in mind this is straight counting, no food, bathroom breaks, tv shows, nothing! When news headlines reference billions of dollars or when you hear about the billions of stars in our galaxy, it can be hard to grasp the enormity of the data, so lets put some perspective on this giant number.
For instance:
A billion pennies is 10 million dollars.
A billion miles could get from Earth to well beyond Saturn
Or a billion miles is about 41,000 trips around the Earth.
And a billion seconds is 31 years, 8 months, and 12 days...That’s enough time for you to do about a billion things!

**side note**...check out this cool link on the time it would take to collect a billion dollars, http://www.classroomtools.com/billion.htm. Yikes!





Also, on April 9, 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for $1 Billion dollars...that's a lot of money!!

1 comment:

Ronnie said...

Great information. You really put this into context for me! :)