How much is a billion?

So in other news, Bill Gates has regained his title of the world’s richest man with a fortune that is valued at 72.7 billion US dollars. That's right he's back on top of the list. The last time he was on top was in 2007. You know how much is 72.7 billion dollars? Read on.

The words million and billion are used so frequently (often together), we fail to recognize just how big a billion really is. Perhaps it is because these words sound so similar to each other.

So how much is a billion really?

In the short scale, numbers progress such that a new term greater than million is a 1,000 times the previous term. Thus,

A million is thousand thousands; that is 1,000,000

A billion is a thousand millions; that is 1,000,000,000 and so on and so forth

Here’s an exercise that is guaranteed to blow your mind. Let’s calculate how much is a million seconds. For the sake of readability I am going to round-even all calculations.

A minute has 60 seconds, so dividing 1,000,000 by 60 gives us 16667 minutes.

An hour has 60 minutes, so dividing 16667 by 60 gives us 278 hours.

A day has 24 hours, so dividing 278 by 24 gives us more or less 12 days.

That’s how big a million seconds is. 12 days.

And if you thought that was big, let’s do the same thing a billion seconds.

A minute has 60 seconds, so dividing 1,000,000,000 by 60 gives us 16666667 minutes.

An hour has 60 minutes, so dividing 16666667 by 60 gives us 277778 hours.

A day has 24 hours, so dividing 277778 by 24 gives us 11574 days. That doesn't seem right..... right? Nope. The math checks out.

A month has, on an average, 30.5 days, so dividing 11574 by 30.5 gives us 379 months.

A year has 12 months, so dividing 379 months gives us 32 years.

That’s how big a billion seconds, 32 years.

Mind blown yet? And don't even get me started on the long scale.