 HOW BIG IS 3.8 TRILLION? 25^9 = 3,814,697,265,625 Let's break 3,814,697,265,625 down into more understandable figures. Take a typical board game die. It's 16 millimeters long on each side, or 16mm cubed. That's about five eighths of an inch. Now take 25 dice and put them in a line. That line is 400mm long, or 1.312333333 feet, or 15.748 inches, which is about the length of a piece of firewood, or the distance between two-by-four studs in the walls of a house. This is 19.0500381 dice per foot. Now take those 25 dice in a line and add 24 more lines, for a square of dice 25 by 25. That's 25 squared for a total of 625 dice, making a square 1.3123 feet by 1.3123 feet. Now take that square and turn it into a cube by taking your 25x25 dice square and adding 24 more rows vertically. That's 25 cubed for a total of 15,625 dice in a cube with edges of 1.3123 feet. That's roughly the empty space under the seat of a dining room chair. Now take all 15,625 dice out of your cube and line them up side by side in one long line. That line is 820.2083333 feet long, which is five eighths of the way around a 400-meter track, or the distance from the 150-meter mark to the finish line. Now cube your 820-foot long line of dice. Start with a 15,625 by 15,625 square of 244,140,625 dice. That's 672,741.71 square feet or 15.444 acres. Add 15,624 more layers of dice and you have your cube: 820 feet tall, 820 feet wide, and 820 feet deep, with a grand total of 3,814,697,265,625 dice. 3.8 trillion. Now that's a big cube! That's taller than every building in Seattle except the Columbia Tower. In fact, the 34-story Westin Building (not the hotel towers) at 6th and Virginia in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, at 409 feet, is only half the height of our 3.8 trillion dice cube. One way to visualize our giant cube would take up four city blocks: the block the Westin Tower is on, and the three blocks north, northwest, and west of it. The four blocks bounded by 4th, 5th, and 6th Avenues, and Virginia, Lenora, and Blanchard Streets are an average of 918.22 feet long north/south, and 710.52 feet wide east/west, including streets. At 820 feet high, twice the height of the Westin Tower, this cube of dice would be only 1.4% fewer cubic feet than the example we just made. So fill up four city blocks with dice as high as the Westin Tower, then double that height, and you can start to fathom how big 3.8 trillion is. That's a lot of Yahtzee! Matt Mullenix 2012.03.03 _________________________________________________________________ Columbia Tower, 937 ft, 76 floors Washington Mutual Tower, 772 ft, 55 floors Two Union Square, 740 ft, 56 floors Seattle Municipal Tower, 722 ft, 62 floors Space Needle, 605 ft The Westin Building, 2001 6th Ave, 409 ft, 34 floors Wikipedia: tallest buildings in Seattle quarter section map bit.ly/2mgLTpw 987987 |
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