What does a Trillion Bucks LOOK like?

I have asked people to just simply stop and think about what a trillion dollars really is, since so many just seem to toss the number around as though it's not that much more than a billion. It frustrates me because just a handful or so years ago, a 'trillion' was rarely used when talking about money. It was an 'out-there' amount of cash. Now, heck, trillion this, trillion that, who cares.... I Care! And so should you. So here is a fun little thing to show you what a trillion dollars actually looks like (since it would take you more than 31,000 YEARS to actually count to one trillion, it's better to show you in a few simple steps or you would be dead long before hitting that special trillion number in your head)

CLICK ME!

ps in case you don't believe me that it would take 31000+ YEARS to count to one trillion, it's pretty easy to figure out. If you count one number per second, that's 1 trillion seconds (obviously).

1 trillion seconds / 60 (seconds in a minute) = 16666666666 minutes
16666666666 minutes / 60 (minutes in an hour) = 277777777 hours
277777777 hours / 24 (hours in a day) = 11574074 days
11574074 days / 365 (days in a year) = 31,709 YEARS

tada :)

or if you prefer, you could speed things up a bit and count 2 numbers per second, then it would only take you 15,854 years. Phew that sounds much better!