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.
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!
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?
4. A Trillion:
1.000.000.000.000
A block of 1 x 1 meters for 1 kilometre
consisting of these 1 mm3 cubes
6. A Quintillion
1.000.000.000.000.000.000
Now the small cubes equal a cubic
kilometre.
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.
7. A Trilliard
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
Visualize dragging the 1 km3 for
1,000 kilometres.
8. A Quadrillion
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000
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
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.0
00
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.