Friday, May 23, 2008

What's the difference between one million and one trillion?

Well, let's get a sense of how much one million is before we tackle a trillion. There are 60 minutes in an hour, 1440 minutes in a day, and 525,600 minutes in a year. Double 525,600 and you get 1,051,200. In other words, one million minutes is 35 days less than two years. If you took your age and divided it in two, you'd know about how many million minutes you've been alive. Now, the difference between a million and a billion is three more zeros. So, a million minutes takes about 2 years, a billion minutes takes about 2,000 years, and a trillion minutes takes about 200,000,000 years. That's a big difference. Think about that difference the next time you hear people discussing the U.S Federal budget.