Crash Course Chapter 11: How Much Is A Trillion?


During the Crash Course you will often encounter numbers that are expressed in trillions. How much is a trillion?

You know what? I’m not really sure myself.


First, a numerical review.

A thousand is a one with three zeros after it.

A million is a thousand times bigger than that and it’s a one with six zeros after it. At this level I can really get my mind around the difference between these two numbers. A million dollars in the bank is a very different concept from a thousand dollars in the bank. I get that.

A billion then is a thousand times bigger than a million, and it’s a one followed by 9 zeros.

And a trillion is a thousand times bigger than that, and it’s a one followed by 12 zeros.

So a trillion is a thousand billions, which means it is a million millions. You know what? I don’t know what that means! I can’t visualize that, so let’s take a different tack on this.

Suppose I gave you a thousand dollar bill and said you and a friend had to spend it all in a single evening out on the town. You’d have a pretty good time.

Now suppose you had a stack of thousand dollar bills that was four inches in height. If you did, you know what? Congratulations, you’d be a millionaire.

Now suppose you wanted to enter the super-elite of the wealthy and have a billion dollars. How tall of a stack of thousand dollar bills would that be?

The answer is a stack only 358 feet high, seen here barely reaching 1/3rd of the way up the Petronas towers.

Now how about a stack of thousand dollar bills to equal a trillion dollars? How tall would that stack be? Think of an answer.

Well, that stack would be 67.9 miles high.

And I meant stack, not laid end to end or anything cheesy like that. A solid stack of thousand dollar bills, 67.9 miles high. Now that’s a trillion dollars.

That still doesn’t do it for you?

Okay, I want you to imagine that you’re in a car on a roadway that is lined at the side with a sideways stack of thousand dollar bills. A nice, compact, rectangular column of thousand dollar bills is snaking along the roadside next to you as you drive.

You drive along brrrrrrrrrrrrr without stopping for a little more than an hour, and the entire way there’s that stack of thousand dollar bills right next you, on the side of the road, the whole way.

Said another way, the amount of money created in the past 4.5 months in our economic system, if it had been printed up as thousand dollar bills and stacked along the side of the road, would stretch from Springfield, Massachusetts to Albany, New York.

So there it is. Either you can visualize the stack better by driving along next to it, or by standing on top if it, or any other way you wish to express this statement.




sealevel's picture
Status: Member (Offline)
Joined: Jul 10 2013
Posts: 1

I find the timw dimension helpful here
we've live a billion seconds just before our 32 birthday.

To life a trillion seconds (if my cals are correct) would mean living almost 32,000 years!

Jeffery's picture
Status: Member (Offline)
Joined: Jan 7 2015
Posts: 1
that is a lot of money.

here is another visual for you. Pallets of 1000.00 bills.

i am floored when I think of the national debt.

I am new here so I am learning so much.

Thank you much


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