How Much is a "Trillion"?

The comments section of the post "Trillion With a 'T': How to Spend $1,000,000,000,000" generated a few little factoids about just how large a number a trillion really is.

did you know that my calculator shows 1 trillion seconds to add up to 31,709 years six and a half months.

PAUL

It is also 11,574,074.1 days. A trillion seconds is over 11,000,000 days.

To Paul: I too have been trying to disseminate the message of just how much $1 Trillion is. I don't think most Americans have ever really considered it or tried to conceptualize it. It's a great, great deal more than just a measley $1 Billion. But hey, million, billion, trillion - they all sound similar. But you're right at 86,400 seconds per day, 1 trillion equals 31,709.6xxx YEARS!

Paladin

If you earned $1,000,000 per day, and saved every penny, it would be 2,740 YEARS before you had $1,000,000,000,000.

How much does a trillion pennies weigh? Current pennies weigh 2.5 grams. So a trillion pennies will weigh 2.5 trillion grams. Google convert gives us 2,500,000,000,000 grams = 5.51155655 × 10⁹ pounds. If the "stimulus" package were to be paid out in pennies, the pennies would weigh over 2,755,778 tons. My friends, 2.75 million tons of pennies were just spent by the .gov in this stimulus package. That is more than twice the total amount of copper produced in the United States each year.

The .gov just authorized spending $3,269.76 for every man, woman and child in these United States. Do you think this bill would have passed if each of us had to pay this money up front, if Congress would have demanded a check for $3,270 from each and every one of us before voting on this bill? What do you think the reaction would have been if our President would have stood up in the town hall meetings and told everyone in attendance that they would have to pay for this so called "stimulus" package? All hell would have broken out, as it should have.