What does one TRILLION dollars look like? All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars... A hundred billion dollars... Eight hundred billion dollars... One TRILLION dollars... What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like. We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go. $100 A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun. $10,000 Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it. $1,000,000 (one million dollars) While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet... $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollars) And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere... $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars) Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros. You ready for this? It's pretty surprising. Go ahead... Scroll down... Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars... $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars)
Your illustration looks a bit misleading to me. Here's my math - $100 bill = .005 inch $10,000 = .5 inch (not including the wrapper which would make a big difference) 1 million dollars (in hundreds) = 4.16 feet tall 1 billion dollars = 4167 feet tall 1 trillion dollars over 789 miles tall! 1 trillion dollars in 1 dollar bills - standing on edge - using nautical miles - would encircle the earth...over 3.5 times!
I get it, your pictures don't get it. A trillion is much much larger. Look at the 1 million pic. If you stacked all those bills would it be over 4 feet tall? Nope...I know its a fucking cartoon but the scale is misleading.
The volume of a single bill is around 2.61"x6.14"x.0043" = .0689 in^3, (dimensions according to the internets) 1 Trillion/100 x .0689 = 689092200 in^3 which is the total volume of all the bills 689092200 in^3 / 48 in = 14356087 in^2 is the area covered by a 4' high stack of bills. Take the square root to find how many inches on each side a 4' high stack of bills would cover. Divide by 12 to find that a trillion dollars worth of 100 dollar bills stacked 4' high would cover an area 315' x 315' This doesn't include the significant increase due to packing gaps, etc. The OP seems pretty close.