The MegaPenny Project

by kokogiak media



Visualizing huge numbers can be very difficult. People regularly talk about millions of miles, billions of bytes, or trillions of dollars, yet it’s still hard to grasp just how much a ‘billion’ really is. The MegaPenny Project aims to help by taking one small everyday item, the U.S. penny, and building on that to answer the question: ‘What would a billion (or a trillion) pennies look like?’

All the following pages have tables at the bottom, listing things such as the value of the pennies, size of the pile, weight, and area (if laid flat). All weights and measurements are U.S. standards, not metric.

I found this site oddly absorbing. We talk about large numbers at work a lot… but when we say that one of our competitors has assests worth almost a trillion dollars, that number really isn’t very… real. The MegaPenny project is trying to help.

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Author: Jorah

I grew up in New England, did a short stint in the U.S. Navy after high school, worked in various factories, built & renovated houses, and finally moved to the Carolinas in 1998 to start working at what was then a large regional bank and is now a really big nationwide bank. I work doing SharePoint management site management. After work I make soap, knit, ride my motorcycle, read, watch movies & eat. I ride a Yamaha V-Star 1300. I am pretty sure that I want to hike the Appalachian Trail someday, or possibly do a long-distance rowing trip. I'll be retiring in a few years, and hope to run a craft soap-making business to bring in some cash.