How Much Is A Trillion?

One trillion pennies.

Do you know? Then, you are a part of only 21% of the American public surveyed who does!
That's right! Four out of five people in a recent poll (like the famous dentists in the Trident commercial) couldn't answer the question correctly as to "how much is a trillion?".

Poll: How many millions are in a trillion?

Q: How many times larger is a trillion than a million? Would you say…

* One Thousand Times- 18%
* Ten Thousand Times- 12%
* One Hundred Thousand Times- 21%
* One Million Times- 21%
* Ten Million Times- 17%
* Don’t Know- 12%

Correct answer: A trillion is a million million. (One million times one million)

Stack those pennies one on top of another (and use a little superglue, so they don't fall over!) and you'll have a stack 986,426 miles high! That's nearly three times the distance from the earth to the moon!

Here's what a trillion dollars looks like. (That's me in the lower left hand corner for comparison. 6'3")


One trillion dollars.


The fact that four out of five Americans haven't a clue as to how much a trillion dollars is, could explain part of Obama's popularity in the face of trillion dollar spending sprees and multi-trillion dollar deficits. It simply doesn't register with some people how big that number really is!

Cross posted at Say Anything