What Does $15,000,000,000,000 Look Like?

As the United States approaches a national debt of $15 trillion, I wondered what does $15 trillion look like.

If you made wall paper (or carpet) made of $1-dollar bills, you could almost cover the entire state of North Dakota with 15,000,000,000,000 crisp one-dollar bills.

Get out your ruler, and draw a square that's one square foot. You can almost fit 8 dollar bills in your square.

Now, a square mile is 265,476,400 square feet. Multiply that by 8, and you see that if you can cover one square mile with 2,123,801,200 dollar bills.

Now divide 2,123,801,200 into 15,000,000,000,000. Your answer is: about 70,000.

The state of North Dakota is about 70,000 square miles. You could cover the entire state with one dollar bills.

And the worst thing is,  I didn't win the $100,000 Powerline Prize. Damn.