Comments on: Giggety giggety gigapennies

By: Blow your mind, one cent at a time « CyberLizard’s Collection

Blow your mind, one cent at a time « CyberLizard’s Collection — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:09:49 +0000

[...] tip: Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy – random thoughts and other useless ephemera from the brain of the [...]

By: Nancy B.

Nancy B. — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:57:18 +0000

I can’t wait to show this to my 5th graders, who freaked out when we read that the sun will die out in a few billion years. This should help with their visualization of numbers.

By: Links of the Week (2009/03) :: cimddwc

Links of the Week (2009/03) :: cimddwc — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:35:39 +0000

[...] How much are a million pennies? Or a trillion? Or…? The MegaPenny Project helps to understand these numbers (to some extent)… (via Bad Astronomy). [...]

By: lars bruchmann

lars bruchmann — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:04:41 +0000

I heard a penny costs over a penny to make, we should just get rid of them. then this entire string would be irrelevant, right? lol. that borg cube of pennies was terrifying though! so if i don’t have a penny, will a half penny do?

By: Andrew R

Andrew R — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:55:08 +0000

interesting to note…one quintillion pennies stacked = a little over 1/6 of a light year long

By: SteveG

SteveG — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:41:50 +0000

Interesting table on the names of numbers. I don’t know how accurate it is truly but it seems to make scents (I couldn’t resist)

http://www.jimloy.com/math/billion.htm

By: SteveG

SteveG — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:30:14 +0000

Big numbers can be hard to comprehend.

However, big numbers also multiply small errors.

According to the US Mint, a penny is 1.55 mm thick (the metric system for US coins, go figure). But that makes a penny .061023 inches tall, just less than .0625, 1/16th of an inch. So 16 pennies are .976 inches tall, not 1 inch. 40 pennies are 2.44 inches tall, not quite 2.5. By the time you get to a cubic foot of pennies, you’re off by a quarter of an inch.

I’m not one to pick on details – or maybe I am. But I was impressed when I thought a penny was 1/16th of a foot wide and 1/16th of an inch tall. I thought, how elegant! I wondered if it was by coincidence or design. When I checked then I realized it wasn’t quite so.

Still a great site, though I might suggest a few qualifiers in the statements such “almost a foot tall”, etc.

Just my 2 cents…