There are black moments. There are aphotic places. And again there's getting a 31-year-old man anxiously stacking Sour Patch Kids on the kitchen adverse in a bashful accommodation at 2:00am.
Think you accept any abstraction what a quadrillion looks like? Well, you're apparently wrong! Thankfully, Tim Urban from WaitButWhy.com (along with a little advice from some Sour Patch Kids) is actuality to set you straight.
To accept how I concluded up here, let's aback up a brace hours to midnight, if I was staring at my computer at a half-completed column that I hated.
The affair about bad Wait But Why posts is they don't like to acknowledge themselves appropriate away—they like to beard themselves as acceptable posts until I plan on them for a continued time, and again they're al of a sudden like, "Oh btw I'm a actual bad post." And I acquisition myself sitting there in despair, acumen I charge to atom all the plan and alpha something different.
So that's what I did at midnight endure night and absitively instead to do a column I've been absent to do for a continued time—visually depicting massive numbers, to advice get my (and your) arch about words like "quadrillion."
The accessible agency to do this was to use cubes like those board cubic centimeter and cubic decimeter cubes that were in our 3rd brand classrooms, but it was backward at night and in my admixture of anguish and delirium, I concluded up authoritative a adequately baffling and awe-inspiring accommodation to use Sour Patch Kids as my assemblage of ambit instead. I don't accept it any bigger than you do, but it angry into me branch to 7-Eleven at 1:00am to beam at this bank for like 70 seconds:
And somehow, there were no Sour Patch Kids.
I wandered about the abundance for awhile, and assuredly I came above this, which I looked at for a continued time afore free it absolutely wasn't what I wanted.
I confused on and headed to a adjacent acceptable store. They aswell had no accustomed Sour Patch Kids, just some acid "eXtreme" version. I wasn't pleased, but it was late, I was aging, and they seemed abutting enough, so I bought ten bags.
I can't brainstorm what the accountant anticipation as I fabricated this 1:30am purchase, added than "this guy is about to accept one of the a lot of black abandoned parties of all time."
I assuredly fabricated it aback home, bankrupt accessible the bags, and started measuring.
3cm x 1cm x .5cm.
Next I lined up 10. Note the unappealing, radioactive colors Cadbury has called for its Sour Patch Kids eXtreme brand:
Next I laid 50 out:
And added addition band of 50 on top to accomplish 100:
And in a night abounding with moments of self-loathing, anxiously agreement 50 eXtreme Sour Patch Kids on top of addition 50 eXtreme Sour Patch Kids, abandoned at 2am, was the low point. Moving on—
Mercifully, I was able to archetype and adhesive for all added building. The next footfall was to accomplish a assemblage of ten of my 100-structure aloft to accomplish 1,000:
That box is 10cm x 10cm x 15cm, so 1 actor Sour Patch Kids is a 1m x 1m x 1.5m box:
1,000 of those boxes yields a 10m x 10m x 15m box that holds 1 billion Sour Patch Kids. Just a bit lower than the top of the Green Monster:
1,000 of those and we get to a abundance Sour Patch Kids, basic a 100m x 100m x 150m box that kills a agglomeration of squirrels in Central Park:
This helps allegorize just how huge a amount a abundance is. A abundance is important because it's the better amount that comes up in circadian life. We appear above a abundance mainly if it comes to the government and money, and it's such a ample number, a assemblage of a abundance tightly-packed Sour Patch Kids would awning a football acreage and be as top as a 30-story building.
Now we access the branch of numbers that are commonly absurd to conceptualize. Luckily, we accept my asinine Sour Patch Kids adjustment to help.
Taking 1,000 of the football stadium-size abundance box aloft and alignment them in a 10 x 10 x 10 box with ambit 1km x 1km x 1.5km, we now accept 1 quadrillion Sour Patch Kids, accoutrement a lot of of Downtown Manhattan. A quadrillion is a thousand trillion, or a actor billion, and accounting out, it's 1,000,000,000,000,000.
For reference, I put the Empire State Architecture and the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, next to the box.
If you're wondering, experts say that there are about amid one and ten quadrillion all-overs on Earth.
The next footfall is a quintillion. At their accomplished canoeing altitude, bartering flights fly just above the top of this 10km x 10km x 15km box, which covers a lot of of West LA:
Want to apperceive how baby an atom is? According to Physlink.com, there are 1.2 quintillion atoms in a atom of salt. So anticipate about this massive airplane-height assemblage of tightly-packed Sour Patch Kids above. There are added than that abounding atoms in one atom of salt. Even added abominable is that NPR says that the amount of grains of beach in the apple is almost 7.5 quintillion, abandoned about seven times greater than the amount of atoms amount in a atom of salt.
Further, 1.7 quintillion represents the amount of Sour Patch Kids you'd charge to absolute the absolute apparent of the Earth with them. I depicted 1.7 quintillion below—so if you advance this box out into one layer, it would absolutely awning every inch of the planet:
1,000 quintillion boxes gets us to 1 sextillion, or a billion of those abundance boxes we saw sitting in Central Park above. 1 sextillion Sour Patch Kids makes a 100km x 100km x 150km assemblage that covers Switzerland. Note the aeroplane depicting the accomplished bartering aeroplane altitude:
1,000 sextillion makes 1 septillion, and a septillion Sour Patch Kids (1,000km x 1,000km x 1,500km) covers a lot of of India and stretches abysmal into space, accomplished the all-embracing amplitude station:
Any bond of Avogadro's Amount from Chemistry class? It's the amount of hydrogen molecules in a gram of hydrogen, and the amount of atoms in a mole. The amount is 6.022e23, or .6 septillion, which is 60% of the box above. Avogadro was not attractive.
1,000 septillion is 1 octillion, and at this point we move above all accordant reference. An octillion Sour Patch Kids is about as big as the Earth:
1,000 Earth-size octillion boxes equals one nonillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Sour Patch Kids. It stretches about bisected the ambit amid the Earth and the moon (384,400 km), which are both fatigued to scale:
I am quivering to accumulate going. I charge to apperceive how big the next one (decillion) looks in allegory to the sun and how big the one afterwards that looks in affiliation to the accomplished solar arrangement and how abounding added illions until we're bigger than the galaxy. But I'm acquisition my backbone and stopping. Because this is a column about big numbers, not about amplitude and distances, and accept me, there will be a thorough post about amplitude and distances some added time, back I've been actively dating astrochemistry back I was three.
P.S. Sour Patch Kids are low quality. Nothing will betrayal something for getting fabricated in a branch in the cheapest accessible way like aperture ten bales of them and searching at a agglomeration of them for awhile.
P.P.S. I ate no beneath than 30 throughout the night even admitting I was more afraid by them as I fabricated my 100 structure.
Image: Flickr/Caffeine and Film
This commodity has been republished with permission from DisplayMate.com, area it can be apparent here.
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