Question

The annual expenditure of the US federal government is approximately

trillion dollars.
If a one dollar bill is

meters thick, how many meters tall would a stack of

trillion one dollar bills be?
Write your answer in scientific notation.
For reference:

1 trillion =10^12

Answer 1

To determine the height of a stack of \(1\) trillion one dollar bills, we can follow these steps:

1. **Calculate the number of bills:**
- \(1\) trillion = \(10^{12}\) bills.

2. **Determine the thickness of each bill:**
- Let’s denote the thickness of one bill as \(T\) meters (you can fill in this value based on your data).

3. **Calculate the total thickness of the stack:**
- The total height \(H\) in meters of a stack of \(10^{12}\) bills can be calculated as:
\[
H = (10^{12} \text{ bills}) \times (T \text{ meters per bill}) = 10^{12} \times T \text{ meters}
\]

4. **Express in scientific notation:**
- This will yield \(H = 10^{12} T\) meters.

Now, if you provide the thickness of one dollar bill in meters, namely \(T\), you can substitute that value into the equation to find \(H\).

For example, if we assume the thickness of a dollar bill is approximately \(0.0001\) meters (which is \(0.1\) millimeters), then we could compute:

\[
H = 10^{12} \times 0.0001 = 10^{12} \times 10^{-4} = 10^{8} \text{ meters}
\]

Thus, the height of the stack in scientific notation would be:

\[
H = 1 \times 10^{8} \text{ meters}
\]

Please provide the values for the expenditure and thickness if needed, and I can assist with any further calculations!