Question

How much would it cost to cover the entire land area of the U.S. in dollar bills?


How much would it take to cover the entire land area of the U.S. in dollar bills?

The contiguous United States can be approximated as a rectangle that measures 1000 x 3000 miles, while Alaska has about 1/5 of the area of the contiguous U.S. Ignore Hawaii for this calculation. Also note that the dollar bill measures roughly 6.5cm x 15.5cm.

How much would it cost to cover the entire land area of the United States?

*Round your answer to one significant figure*

Answer 1

Answer:

  $900 trillion

Explanation:

If Alaska is 20% of the contiguous US, then the approximate area of interest is ...

  1200 miles × 3000 miles = 3.6×10^6 square miles.

The size of a dollar bill is about ...

  (6.5 cm)·(15.5 cm) = 100.75 cm^2

One mile is 160,934.4 cm, so 1 square mile is about ...

  1 mi^2 = (160,934.4 cm)^2 ≈ 2.59·10^10 cm^2

The number of dollars of interest is then ...

  (3.6 · 10^6 mi^2)(2.59 · 10^10 cm^2)/(100.75 cm^2) ≈ 9.3·10^14

  ≈ 930 × 10^12 . . . dollars

It would cost about 900 trillion dollars to cover the land area of the US in $1 bills.