How big is big?

The Real Stuff

I was reading the first chapter of Humble Pi, during lockdown as you do, by Matt Parker (have a look at his website - http://standupmaths.com/) and loved his idea of describing large numbers. Let me quote from him, citing in Havard style in case some students ever read this.

"We know a million, a billion and a trillion are different sizes, but we often don't appreciate the staggering increases between them. A million seconds from now is just shy of eleven days and fourteen hours." (Parker, 2019, p.310)

 1,000,000 seconds = nearly 11 days and 14 hours. 

"Not so bad. I could wait that long. It's within two weeks. A billion seconds is over thirty-one years." (Parker, 2019, p.310) 

1,000,000,000 seconds = just over 31 years. 

"A trillion seconds from now is after the 33700 CE." (Parker, 2019, p.310)

 1,000,000,000,000 = approximately 31,681 years. If you didn't know about CE, where have you been? CE is the "a method of numbering years which refers to the period of time that began after the birth of Jesus Christ" (Macmillan, 2020) and came into use in around September 2011. It came in for a lot of criticism from various religions. 

"Those surprising numbers actually make perfect sense after a moment's thought. Million, billion and trillion are each a thousand times bigger than each other. A million seconds is roughly a third of a month, so a billion seconds is on the order of 330 (a third of a thousand) months. And if a billion is around thirty-one years, then of course a trillion is around 31,000 years." (Parker, 2019, p.310) 

Then there is an image in the book by Ian Wright, not the footballer, entitled "Brilliant Maps - An atlas for curious minds" created an image that has been adapted by many that shows that all the world's land fits into the area of the Pacific Ocean. 

"The Pacific Ocean covers 165.25 million square kilometres. The Earth's land mass covers 148.94 million square kilometres." (Wright, 2019, p.124-125)

(Brilliant Maps, 2015)

Who noticed the not so deliberate mistake in this first post?

Bibliography

Just a note that I am using a Harvard Reference Generator (https://www.mybib.com/) 

Brilliant Maps (2015). The Pacific Ocean is Larger Than All Land On Earth. [online] Brilliant Maps. Available at: https://brilliantmaps.com/the-pacific-ocean-is-larger-than-all-land-on-earth/ [Accessed 1 May 2020].

www.macmillandictionary.com. (n.d.). Common Era - definition of Common Era, BCE CE, BuzzWord from Macmillan Dictionary. [online] Available at: https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/common-era.html [Accessed 1 May 2020].

Parker, M. (2020). HUMBLE PI : a comedy of maths errors. 1st ed. S.L.: Penguin Books, p.310. Love that the pages are numbered as sections of Pi.

Wright, I. (2019). Brilliant Maps - An Atlas For Curious Minds. 1st ed. London: Granta Publications, pp.124–125.