Place Values

Do you remember these charts from grade school?

14,000,000,000,000.00

Could you have told me what the number above was just by looking at it? I sure as heck couldn't have. I homeschool my kids, and beats me if I have ever had them go up to the trillionth spot when doing place values! That number has always been left as a 'hypothetical' in our house.

It has 12 zeroes after it. Type it out, right now, just for fun.Really. Go ahead-I double dog dare you!

Here are some other fun facts about the number 14,000,000,000,000.00 (14 trillion)

• 1 Million x 1 Million = 1 Trillion

I love this next one:

• If I gave you 5 million dollars every day of the year( thats 5,000,000.00) including Sundays, do you know how long it would take to reach one trillion?

  547 years.

(If you want to know how long it would take to get to 14  trillion that would be 7658 years!)

OK here's another one-

•  if we gave one trillion dollars in bailouts from the government to all the states  in our great nation, each state would get 20 billion dollars.

Here are some more visuals to help you get a handle on this all.

Here is a stack of hundred dollar bills1/2 inch think. It equals 10,000.00 Can you imagine how much fun you might have with that?

Now here is a picture of a million dollars. Kind of small actually isn't it? Remember these are still 100 dollar bills.

Next a picture of one hundred million dollars, a bit more impressive, right?

Now we're starting to get somewhere with a billion dollars:

OK- here goes-finally- this is now one trillion dollars! Try to find the guy in the red shirt!Better take out your magnifying glass. Those are double stacked pallets of 100 dollar bills.Try doing that times 14!

One last image for a neat comparison for my football loving friends Christine and Ken, (and NO that is not a playskool football field!) This is a size comparison of 100 dollar bills equaling one trillion dollars compared to a football field.

That makes the problem a little bit clearer doesn't it?