Big, Big, BIG Numbers

My one-a-day calendar for this year is an IQ Puzzles calendar. I decided I need to challenge my brain on a more regular basis and this seemed a good way to do it. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are a fun challenge, and some are downright impossible.

Okay, not impossible. Just hard enough that I give up and look at the answers on the back.

The January 6 puzzle is meant to be a math puzzle, but I didn't even try to solve it since it felt more like a trivia question to me. You know, an interesting fact.

For those of you who like math enough to tackle this kind of problem, I'll give you the question and let you scroll a bit for the answer:

You have someone counting a billion dollars for you and he counts a dollar per second. He works eight hours a day and takes four weeks holiday. How long will this person be counting?

(Insert Jeopary music here...)

Answer: If this person works five days a week, 48 weeks a year, he will be counting 144 years, 248 days and 1.6 hours.

That's a really, really, really long time.

It kinda gives new weight to the number "one billion" - something we hear tossed around so much that I think we get numb to it. Like gratuitous violence in movies and soft-core porn in our commercials. How many of us really grasp the implications of one billion of anything?

Especially in the following context:

As of January 15, 2010 the United States National Debt is

twelve trillion dollars.

Trillion, not billion. There are one thousand billions in one trillion. And we've got 12 trillion in debt.

If I'm doing my math correctly (feel free to check me, since it's highly likely I'm not) that little dollar counting fellow would be counting our national debt for roughly

1 million 736 thousand 160 YEARS!

That can't be good.