A Billion What?

If you’ve been half-way awake in the last 30 months, you no doubt have at least heard about the arguments in Washington as to HOW MANY American tax dollars ?the elected officials have doled out to the American people under the ubiquitous term known as pandemic relief.?One side wanted to limit the amount to $600 BILLION and the other side said the amount should be in the neighborhood of$1.9 TRILLION.?Do you remember that argument??These are absolutely ginormous numbers.?I am not trying to patronize you, but you already know this -- ?a million is equal to one thousand thousands.?A billion is equal to one thousand millions.?And a trillion is equal to one thousand billions.?I’m not even going to perplex your brain with the trillion number because it would be too much like NASA and stars-in-the-galaxies material – it would probably take us all “over the edge.”?So, for this post, I’m going to elaborate on JUST the billion number … you know, the “with a B” number.?And, for whatever the number is, it’s a big one and I don’t think our elected officials on either side of the aisle really understand the girth of this behemoth.?For a better understanding of the buh buh B number (billion), I’ve done a little bit of math manipulation for you.?See the examples below.?You will be amazed.?I was.?

As alluded to above, we all have difficulty imagining how many one billion of anything actually is.?

Exercise 1— Simple Counting … 1 to one billion

Let's say that you take a dare to count to 1 billion. How long will that take ya?

Most of us would be able to say the small numbers like 4 or 31 fairly rapidly, but most of the numbers between one and a billion are long and challenging to pronounce. When we start counting the larger numbers like 467,051,372 we are really going to slow down (how long does it take you to say four hundred and sixty-seven million, fifty-one thousand, three hundred and seventy-two?). If we allow?just three seconds to say each number, which is probably faster than most of us could manage, and we no breaks at all (ya say you’re thirsty?) ?it would take us somewhere around three billion seconds to finish counting to one billion.?Follow carefully with the math below.?You’re gonna like this. ?Follow closely.

Three billion seconds divided by 60 (seconds per minute) = 50,000,000 minutes

50,000,000 minutes divided by 60 (minutes per hour) = 833,333.333 hours

833,333.333 hours divided by 24 (hours per day) = 34,722.22 days

34,722.22 days divided by 365 (days per year) = 96 years is how long it will take us to count to 1 billion.?My goodness, just to put it in perspective,?that means?it would have taken Queen Elizabeth (who just passed) her entire life to count to a billion, grossly assuming she could talk at one day old.?Sheesh.??That is a billion counted out.?This, one billion, ?is just one teeny tiny minute fraction of what Washington talks about every day.?Mind-blowing isn’t it?

Exercise 2—Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

How long would it take for you to become a billionaire?

Let's say that you are trying to save $1,000,000,000 dollars and you are able to save your money at a rate of $100 per day.?Think about that … a hundred bucks per day to save.

1,000,000,000 divided by 100 (dollars saved per day) = 10,000,000 days

10,000,000 days divided by 365 (days per year) = 27,397.26 years to reach $1 billion saved.?Does this not blow your mind that some folks like Gates, Buffett, Musk, ?Bezos, Winfrey and many others have amassed themselves many billions.

It will take a pretty long time to reach your goal! In fact, you would never get there in your lifetime. Nor would your children, grandchildren or great grandchildren. If you, and one of your offspring per generation, saved $100 every day, and each of you lived for 90 years, it would take you and 304 generations of your family to save up one billion dollars.?Humbling eh?

Exercise 3—A Billion Step Hike

You decide to take a "billion step" hike. How many times would that take you around the equator?

Let's say that one step spans a 2-foot length—an average distance.

2 feet per step = 2 billion total feet traveled

1 mile = 5280 feet

2 billion (feet traveled) divided by 5280 (feet per mile) = 378,787.8787 total miles

The equator's circumference = 24,792.5 miles

378,787.8787 (total miles) divided by 24,792.5 (miles around the equator) = 15.278 times around the equator! You’d better have some good soles on those walking shoes.

Exercise 4— A One-Billion-Sheet Stack of Paper

How much paper would it take to represent a billion??

Well, this is more easily solved when figuring it in reams of paper.?I know that one ream of paper is two inches thick. Then, divide by 500, because there are 500 pieces of paper in a ream. (0.004 inches).?Next, multiply that by a billion?and you get 4000000000 inches.?Divide this number by 63,360 (number of inches in a mile) and you get an unbelievable answer.?One billion sheets of paper stacked up on top of one another …. and then put that stack down in a line like a huge accordion would go from downtown Hendersonville to downtown Lewisburg, Tennessee in Marshall County (not too far from the Alabama state line).?Is that not unreal??Now that is having the paper accordioned (“sandwiched”) together – back to front-to-back-to-front for a billion times.?If you were to take those same one billion sheets of paper and place them on the ground in a fashion so that the top edge of one sheet is placed flush against the bottom edge of the next sheet and then the top edge of that sheet to the bottom edge of the next sheet … and do that one billion times, you would have a continuous length of copy paper that would go around the equator of the Earth SEVEN times.?Does one billion seem unreal to?you yet?

The point of this whole diatribe is that I don’t think the people in Washington really fathom what a billion is, much less hundreds of billions, and not even what a trillion is.?If I were to take the time and do examples for us as to what a trillion amounts to, it would take all of us over the deep edge and cause us to head for a corner and pull a blanket over our heads.

The point of all of this:?We all are such small players in the whole spectrum of all of the universe.?We really think that we’re something … but we’re not.?Study astronomy if you want to feel like a grain of sand amongst the sum-total grains of sand of all the beaches in the world.

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About the Author:?Tom Tucker is an honorably-discharged Vietnam veteran who retired as Director of Development Services for the City of Goodlettsville. Prior to that, his career consisted of being a senior executive for two Fortune 200 corporations. He earned a Ph.D. and B.S. in applied science and an MBA in finance. He is a three-decade aviator whose hobby is 60s Corvettes. ?He has been married to Janet for 48 years.