We
read almost every day about how the earth is becoming overpopulated.
Suppose we put this to the real world test. I form a cube which is 1000
yards on a side. This is not a small cube.Its length is ten football
fields laid end to end. However, we could imagine laying these ten
football fields end to end through the middle of the campus, and doing
the same for the width, and the height. That is, this cube would fit
nicely into the center of our campus. Would you believe, that this cube
will hold every man,woman and child on earth and still have a lot of
empty space left over? If the entire population of the earth could be
put in a box in the center of our campus, is the earth really
overpopulated? I leave that for you to think about.Problem 1:Take a
piece of paper and fold it in half, fold it in half again,fold it in
half again, and do this 51 times. The average piece of paper is .003
inches thick. How high is the stack of paper?
The United States government now spends one and a half trillion dollars a year. This is 1,500-billion dollars. (Be careful here. The word "billion" comes from Italian where it stood for a"million- million" . In the United States it was "mis-translate d" and ended up representing a "thousand- million" .) To grasp the magnitude of such a number, we would have to understand how large a billion is first. Actually, a billion itself is already an incredibly large number. For example, if I invested a billion dollars in a bad company, and this company lost $10,000 per day,seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, then I might worry if I will have any money left at retirement. But, I am still alright, since even at this rate, it will take the company over 200 years to lose my investment. On the other hand, if I took the cap of my pen and magnified it a billion times, then it would be 95,000 miles long and 8,000 miles wide, and the entire earth would
fit inside it (The diameter of the earth is about 7,900 miles.) In fact, a billion is so large, that it was not until 10:40 a.m. on April 20, 1902, that exactly a billion minutes had elapsed since the birth of Christ. I hope that I have now convinced you that a billion is truly a large number. However,it cannot be too large since there are more than one billion ways to give change for a $5 bill.
The United States government now spends one and a half trillion dollars a year. This is 1,500-billion dollars. (Be careful here. The word "billion" comes from Italian where it stood for a"million- million" . In the United States it was "mis-translate d" and ended up representing a "thousand- million" .) To grasp the magnitude of such a number, we would have to understand how large a billion is first. Actually, a billion itself is already an incredibly large number. For example, if I invested a billion dollars in a bad company, and this company lost $10,000 per day,seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, then I might worry if I will have any money left at retirement. But, I am still alright, since even at this rate, it will take the company over 200 years to lose my investment. On the other hand, if I took the cap of my pen and magnified it a billion times, then it would be 95,000 miles long and 8,000 miles wide, and the entire earth would
fit inside it (The diameter of the earth is about 7,900 miles.) In fact, a billion is so large, that it was not until 10:40 a.m. on April 20, 1902, that exactly a billion minutes had elapsed since the birth of Christ. I hope that I have now convinced you that a billion is truly a large number. However,it cannot be too large since there are more than one billion ways to give change for a $5 bill.
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