How Tall is $1 Billion or What Does a Billion Dollars Look Like?

[Okey Iheduru]

Dear Bolaji:

I'd be interested in your reaction to the information below, in view of your "arithmetic" regarding the $700 million propaganda.

Regards,

Okey

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How does a million stack up? - Bill Johnson

http://wbilljohnson.com/journal/math/stackup.htm

A million dollars is a lot of money, but have you ever wondered how high a stack of one million dollar bills would be?

To answer this question we must first determine the thickness of a single dollar bill. We can make this measurement with a dial caliper:

With this measuring tool it is easy to determine that a dollar bill is very close  to 0.004 inches thick. A stack of one million of these would be 0.004 times 1,000,000 or 4,000 inches tall. To convert inches to feet, divide by 12. 4000 divided by 12 is slightly over 333 feet. Wow, that's more than the length of a football field! A football filed is only 100 yards or 300 feet.

A billion is a thousand million. If a stack of a million dollars is 333 feet high, then a stack one thousand times this would be 333,000 feet. To find how high this is in miles simply divide by 5280, the number of feet in a mile. The answer may surprise you. A stack of a billion one dollar bills would reach over 63 miles high!

Note: Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois (b. 1974) is 1,454 feet, 443.0 meters, 110 stories.

It is interesting that our space shuttle flies at an altitude of around two-hundred miles above the earth. We would have to stack 3.2 billion dollars to reach this height. Just for fun I looked up NASA's 06 budget. It  was fourteen billion dollars. Why, that's only enough money to make four trips. :-)

1. The height of a stack of 1,000 one dollar bills measures 4.3 inches. The height of a stack of 1,000,000 one dollar bills measures 4,300 inches or 358 feet – about the height of a 30 to 35 story building. The height of a stack of $100,000,000 (one hundred million) one dollar bills measures 35,851 feet or 6.79 miles. The $700 allegedly found with Ms Desiani-Madueke would be 4,753 miles long!!!
2. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+tall+is+one+million+dollars+stacked
   

What does a billion dollars look like?

http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-billion-dollars-look-like

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Derek Martin, (more)Loading...

A billion dollars look like this in 100 dollar bills:

By way of comparison, a million dollars in 100 dollar bills looks like this:

  

Embed Quote

Written 16 Apr, 2012.

OR

an actual picture of the most cash I've seen:

This is $207M seized from an illegal pharm trafficker in Mexico City. However this isn't even a quarter of $1B.

Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhe...

  

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Written 17 Apr, 2012.

--

Okey Iheduru, PhD
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Okey:

You wrote:

QUOTE

Dear Bolaji:

I'd be interested in your reaction to the information below, in view of your "arithmetic" regarding the $700 million propaganda.

Regards,

Okey

UNQUOTE

Again, let me emphasize that I do not know the veracity of the underlying story, but I insist that storing $700 million in a small portion of a room is completely feasible, unlike how "idiotic" it first sounded to our Accountant and Pastor Joe Attueyi, who I am still waiting for to check on my mathematics.....

Now, the answer to your inquiry - and proof of the rightness of my arithmetic - is provided by your own cut-and-paste pictures.  

Notice that this picture:

is nothing but an enlargement of the bottom left hand corner of this next picture of $207 million allegedly seized from a narco-criminal:

Now $700 million is 3.38 x $207 million - which means that if you stack just over two more IDENTICAL LOTS (in width, length and height) like in the picture on top of the cash above, you get your $700 million loot.

From what I am looking at above, the total height of the expanded cash will likely just reach the TOP of that room!

Okey, come with me:  here is the volumetric equivalencing of two cuboid shapes with rectangular bases:

                      W1 x L1 x H1  = W2 x L2 x H2

A single dollar or single 100-dollar bill has width of 2.61 inches (0.2175 feet) by length of 6.14 inches (0.5117 feet)  by height (thickness) of 0.0043 inches (0.000358 feet).  "Stacking" dollars into a magnificent tower implies stipulating that 

                     W1 = 0.2175 feet and 

                      L1 = 0.5117  feet

and then finding out the H1 that will make the triple product to equal 279 cubic feet (ie $700 million) as I have previously calculated the volume of such an amount of money.

                    H1 = 279/(0.2175 x 0.5117) = 2,507 feet

[Notice that this is close to 333 x 7 = 2331 feet, where 333 comes from your story below for 1 million 100-dollar bills. ]

If you divide that height by 9 feet (typical floor to ceiling height), that is roughly 280 stories high of "stacking", which is an unreasonable way to "store" that money, dramatic as it may sound.

Note that for my more plausible room arrangement of $700 million, 

                        W2 = 5.57 feet  (One "Opara")

                         L2 = 5.57 feet and 

                        H2 = 9.00 feet

And there you have it, my geometry and arithmetically-challenged friend ! :-)

Bolaji Aluko

Having a belly laugh

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

Joe Attueyi:

No problem, Joe - and thanks for the "confession" - it takes a healthy dose of humility to so qualify your numeracy!  But you must fully understand that the exercise required uncommon proficiency in solid geometry, topology and algebra!

There is another point:  with GMB, you have been slow to trust and you wish for verification; with DAM, you were quick to trust, but did not/could not verify! :-)

But let us move on.

Bolaji Aluko

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 11:36 AM, topcrest topcrest <topc...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Prof Aluko,

Your computations, which I have not checked, seem to be right on the face of it and I am the one whose numeracy --but not economics-seems 'idiotic'

And there you have it--as someone we know would say!

Joe

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Posted by: Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>

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