A Sense of Scale: How Big Is a Billion?
September 14, 2015
We often hear there are over a billion transistors in a single microprocessor today, but how big is a billion? That number is so enormous that it’s hard to conceptualize. To put some perspective on this immense quantity, we share some different ways to visualize just how big a billion really is.
Learn more about the scale of semiconductor manufacturing in our blog articles “How High Is High?” and “How Small Is Small?“
A billion sheets of standard copier paper, stacked, would be approximately 97 km high, reaching nearly into outer space.
A billion golf balls laid end-to-end would circle the earth.
A billion seconds ago, it was the year 1983.
A billion paperclips would weigh about as much as 200 African elephants.
If you watched cat videos 24 hours a day, with each video averaging 2 minutes, it would take 3,800 years to watch a billion cat videos.
A billion raindrops would fill approximately 50 bathtubs.
If you and 99 friends each ate 25 cookies a day, every day, it would take over 1,000 years to finish eating a billion cookies.
