Dan recently wrote a post in which he tried to convey the magnitude of a trillion dollars. It’s an almost unimaginable amount of money and is in danger of sounding like an almost trivial, throwaway number; like it’s just one step up from a billion. To understand just how much money it is, it needs converting into a visual – abstract or otherwise. If you were to stack it up on pallets in $100 bills, for example, it would look like this.
Alternatively, imagine that a Native American chief collected scalp after scalp with the intention of attaining a trillion human hairs to make himself a nice carpet for his tepee. Given that the average number of hairs on the human head is around 115,000* he’d have to lop the dermises off 8,695,652 paleface craniums.
Taking the human head as roughly spherical with an approximate 13cm radius and calculating the surface area (using the formula 4πR2) and dividing by three, we’re able to determine the approximate coverage of the flap of hairy skin our chief’s bloodthirsty braves might remove (though subsequent stretching might add a little extra). Each scalp would give us an area of around 708cm2, or 26.5 x 26.5cm.
The square root of 8,695,652 is 2948.83, and multiplying this by the dimensions above gives us our final figure: a patchwork of human axminster containing a trillion human hairs would measure approximately 0.8 kilometres square. More than enough for the big chief’s wigwam, and almost certainly enough to provide a smashing underfoot experience for his whole village, even without underlay.
Bringing things up-to-date, the traditional method of imagining surface area is to use a common denominator of football pitches. Given that the average football pitch is 100m x 50m, with Geronimo’s carpet, you’d have enough for around 121 pitches. That’s the whole of the Premier League, Championship, Leagues 1 & 2 and Conference (though sadly, not Conferences North and South who’d have to stick with grass).
Given that 8.5m (the amount of scalps needed) is approximately the population of Greater London, in theory, if everyone had hair, there would be just enough in the capital to cover the pitches of the English leagues. However, this doesn’t account for baldies who constitute around 25% of the population to varying degrees. Just across the channel however, the population of Paris is around 10.5m which more or less allows for the chrome-dome contingent. Not that I’m advocating the widespread maiming of the denizens of France’s capital to re-turf the football pitches of England in any way.
It would be quite groovy though.
* Fair hair is finer with around 140,000 peppering the heads of blondies, while redheads only have about 90,000. If you were to embark on such an undertaking and wanted something that was softer (and arguably more sightly) underfoot, you’d be well-advised to avoid the gingers.
Alternatively, imagine that a Native American chief collected scalp after scalp with the intention of attaining a trillion human hairs to make himself a nice carpet for his tepee. Given that the average number of hairs on the human head is around 115,000* he’d have to lop the dermises off 8,695,652 paleface craniums.Taking the human head as roughly spherical with an approximate 13cm radius and calculating the surface area (using the formula 4πR2) and dividing by three, we’re able to determine the approximate coverage of the flap of hairy skin our chief’s bloodthirsty braves might remove (though subsequent stretching might add a little extra). Each scalp would give us an area of around 708cm2, or 26.5 x 26.5cm.
The square root of 8,695,652 is 2948.83, and multiplying this by the dimensions above gives us our final figure: a patchwork of human axminster containing a trillion human hairs would measure approximately 0.8 kilometres square. More than enough for the big chief’s wigwam, and almost certainly enough to provide a smashing underfoot experience for his whole village, even without underlay.Bringing things up-to-date, the traditional method of imagining surface area is to use a common denominator of football pitches. Given that the average football pitch is 100m x 50m, with Geronimo’s carpet, you’d have enough for around 121 pitches. That’s the whole of the Premier League, Championship, Leagues 1 & 2 and Conference (though sadly, not Conferences North and South who’d have to stick with grass).
Given that 8.5m (the amount of scalps needed) is approximately the population of Greater London, in theory, if everyone had hair, there would be just enough in the capital to cover the pitches of the English leagues. However, this doesn’t account for baldies who constitute around 25% of the population to varying degrees. Just across the channel however, the population of Paris is around 10.5m which more or less allows for the chrome-dome contingent. Not that I’m advocating the widespread maiming of the denizens of France’s capital to re-turf the football pitches of England in any way.It would be quite groovy though.
* Fair hair is finer with around 140,000 peppering the heads of blondies, while redheads only have about 90,000. If you were to embark on such an undertaking and wanted something that was softer (and arguably more sightly) underfoot, you’d be well-advised to avoid the gingers.
1 comment:
Simply want to say your article is as amazing. The clearness to your publish is just great and i could think you
are an expert in this subject. Fine together with your permission let me
to seize your feed to keep updated with drawing close post.
Thank you a million and please continue the enjoyable work.
Feel free to visit my blog ... appliance repair bookkeeping
Post a Comment