Maths Quiz

Friday Fun

Numbers seem to be getting smaller these days. Used to be that £1 million would last a footballer all season or count as a decent bonus for a bank exec.
But since Northern Wreck the talk is of Billions. Trillions of Billions of toxic debt.
But what do these sums actually mean. Can they even be comprehended?

If you start counting now, out loud, "One..Two.. Three "without pause, you will reach the number 1,000,000 around about 1pm on Tuesday the 16th February, and you will have missed valentines day.

1 minute = 60 seconds.
1 hour = 60 minutes (or 3600 seconds).
1 day = 24 hours (or 86,400 seconds).
1,000,000/86,400 = 11.574 days.

So, today class, and in a departure from the usual national multiple choice curriculum,
how long would it take to count to
A} 1 Billion
B} 1 Trillion

And part 2.
The UK treasury expected to have to borrow only an EXTRA £118bn for 2010.{exceedingly unlikely to be that little..that was the November '08 fantasy amount} Excluding interest, how long would it take to pay off just this extra borrowing at £100 a second.{Answer. Depends how quickly you can get the printing presses to run}

UPDATE

If we wanted to pay down a billion pounds of the UK debt, paying one pound a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds.


To pay off a trillion pounds of debt, at a pound a second, would take about 32,000 years.


About a billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was in full swing. (One billion minutes is about 1,900 years.)


About a billion hours ago, we were living in the Stone Age. (One billion hours is about 114,000 years.)


About a billion months ago, dinosaurs walked the earth. (One billion months is about 82 million years.)


A billion inches is 15,783 miles, more than halfway around the earth (circumference).The earth is about 8,000 miles wide (diameter), and the sun is about 800,000 miles wide, not quite a million.


Total UK personal debt at the end of December 2008 stood at £1,457bn.With Mrs BQ contributing to a healthy % of it.