1.
Imagine someone wins a
million in the lottery and
squanders all that money
within a short time, and it was
only because they couldn't
visualize large
numbers.
To ensure that this does not
happen to you, here are
some tips on how to visualize
large numbers.
2. A Million
1.000.000 - How can you
visualize a million? Take a
metre stick or a ruler and
look at the millimetre lines.
1,000 millimetres equals 1
metre. 1,000 metres,
i.e. a kilometre is made up of
a million millimetres.
One million euros in 500 euro
notes weighs 2.24 kilograms.
Graph paper is made up of a
grid of squares each 1
millimetre in length.
1 Million square metres are
printed on 1 square metre of
graph paper? Rather clear on
a million, right?
3. A Billion
1.000.000.000
One billion millimetres is
equidistant to one thousand
kilometres.
One billion seconds is equal
to 31 years and 8.5 months.
Imagine a cube with a side
length
of one millimetre. A billion of
these cubes would equal one
cubic metre!
4. A Trillion:
1.000.000.000.000
A block of 1 x 1 meters for 1
kilometre consisting of these
1 mm3 cubes.
5. A Billiards
1.000.000.000.000.000
The 1 mm3 cubes now equal
a 1 metre thick slab that
spans 1 square kilometre.
The Chinese super computer
Sunway TaihuLight achieves
a computing speed of 93
petaflops. A petaflop is the
equivalent of a billiard
computer operations per
second.
6. A Quintillion
1.000.000.000.000.000.000
Now the small cubes equal a
cubic kilometre.
7. A Trilliard
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.0
00
Visualize dragging the 1 km3
for 1,000 kilometres.
8. A Quadrillion
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.0
00.000
And now 1,000 kilometres
into the second dimension.
This results in a slab of 1,000
x 1,000 km x 1 km thick,
consisting of one quadrillion
small cubes.
9. A Quadrilliard
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.0
00.000.000
One more mental leap into
the third dimension and we
see a cube with a side length
of 1,000 kilometres.
From this one could cut a
quadrilliard cubes each with
a side length of 1 millimetre.
A quadrilliard water molecule
yields 30 litres of water. See:
"How small atoms are".
One could store videos that
have a length of 5324 billion
years on a storage device of
one quadrilliard. That is
38,000 times longer than the
age of the universe.
