How far apart are a million and a billion?
They sound one letter apart. But a billion isn't a bigger million; it's a thousand millions. A million seconds is a week and a half. A billion seconds is more than 30 years.
Stack the money in $100 bills. Each step zooms out 1,000 times.
Each panel has its own scale; the previous stack shrinks to a dot.
Million, billion, trillion: each word is 1,000 times the one before, but they sound like small steps. Our sense of size works fine for things we can count or see, and then quietly gives up. Past a certain point, "a lot" and "a thousand times more than a lot" feel about the same.
When a big number shows up in the news, a budget, or a population, translate it into something you can picture. Seconds work well: a million is days, a billion is decades, a trillion is all of recorded history several times over.
Next time you hear "billion," will you picture days or decades?
See the numbers
| As seconds | As a stack of $100 bills | Compared to | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Million (1,000,000) | 11.6 days | 3.6 ft (1.09 m) | a kitchen counter |
| Billion (1,000,000,000) | 31.7 years | 3,580 ft (1,092 m) | Burj Khalifa, 2,717 ft (828 m) |
| Trillion (1,000,000,000,000) | 31,700 years | 679 mi (1,092 km) | Space Station orbit, about 250 mi (400 km) up |
Where the numbers come from. A day has 86,400 seconds, so a million seconds is 11.57 days and a billion is 11,574 days, or 31.7 years. A U.S. bill is about 0.0043 inches thick, so 10,000 $100 bills ($1 million) stack about 43 inches high. The last Ice Age was at its coldest about 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, well within 31,700 years.
Explore another number our intuition can't handle
Living vs Ever Lived compares the 8 billion people alive today with everyone who has ever lived, another comparison that only makes sense once you translate the big numbers into something smaller.
Related exhibits
Sources: Seconds conversions are arithmetic (86,400 seconds per day; 365.25-day year). U.S. banknote thickness 0.0043 in from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Burj Khalifa height 2,717 ft (828 m); International Space Station altitude about 250 mi (400 km); Last Glacial Maximum about 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, all from Wikipedia.