View Full Version : One Billion:
proud gonzo
1/27/2006, 06:06 PM
I had to figure this out as an assignment in my zoology class.
TV and movies show 24 frames per second. So to see a billion frames you'd have to watch tv or movies for 482 days, 6 hours, four minutes, and 26 2/3 seconds.
That's enough to watch "Gone with the Wind" 2917.8 times.
:eek:
Scott D
1/27/2006, 06:11 PM
Frankly my gonzo, I don't give a damn! :D
mdklatt
1/27/2006, 06:13 PM
I had to figure this out as an assignment in my zoology class.
TV and movies show 24 frames per second. So to see a billion frames you'd have to watch tv or movies for 482 days, 6 hours, four minutes, and 26 2/3 seconds.
I hope this isn't an upper division class.
Scott D
1/27/2006, 06:16 PM
I hope this isn't an upper division class.
no that's the one where you have to watch 24 hours of tv to verify that either a Michael Caine or Gene Hackman movie is on at all times.
mdklatt
1/27/2006, 06:19 PM
no that's the one where you have to watch 24 hours of tv to verify that a Gene Hackman movie is on at all times.
Six HBO channels
John Gresham movies
QED
GottaHavePride
1/27/2006, 06:20 PM
PINS AND NEEDLES! PINSANDNEEDLES!
King Crimson
1/27/2006, 06:26 PM
ths stat you always see in intro to media studies/mass comm textbooks is that most americans spend around 2-3 years of their life watching commericials.
mdklatt
1/27/2006, 06:28 PM
ths stat you always see in intro to media studies/mass comm textbooks is that most americans spend around 2-3 years of their life watching commericials.
Which 3 years?
ths stat you always see in intro to media studies/mass comm textbooks is that most americans spend around 2-3 years of their life watching commericials.
Yeah, but that was before DVRs.
:D
crawfish
1/27/2006, 06:38 PM
We'd have so much more time if they'd just broadcast at 60fps.
SoonerInKCMO
1/27/2006, 07:21 PM
Why is a college zoology course having you do elementary school math? :confused:
crawfish
1/27/2006, 07:28 PM
Billhyuns and billhyuns
http://www.astrosurf.org/lombry/Documents/sagan-carl-cosmos-1980.jpg
Widescreen
1/27/2006, 07:46 PM
Movies are at 24fps but TV is at 29.97fps. You'll want to redo your numbers.
;)
proud gonzo
1/27/2006, 08:13 PM
I hope this isn't an upper division class.
it's intro to zoology and it's an extra credit assignment--figuring out a way to explain how much a billion is.
yermom
1/27/2006, 08:21 PM
how about "a lot" :D
it's not really that big any more, just look at multimedia files... Apple does it all the time, like 1000 songs to an iPod Nano (2GB = 2 billion bytes)
crawfish
1/27/2006, 08:23 PM
Yeah, but that was before DVRs.
:D
Thank goodness for DVRs. Now I only waste 9 months of my life fast-forwarding through them.
mdklatt
1/27/2006, 08:26 PM
it's intro to zoology and it's an extra credit assignment--figuring out a way to explain how much a billion is.
That's a great example.
GottaHavePride
1/27/2006, 09:13 PM
how about "a lot" :D
it's not really that big any more, just look at multimedia files... Apple does it all the time, like 1000 songs to an iPod Nano (2GB = 2 billion bytes)
I'd never get 1000 songs on one of those. By which I mean you drastically cut down your numbers when you start putting on classical music with half-hour long tracks.
soonerbrat
1/27/2006, 09:20 PM
or...
a million seconds is 11.57 days
a billion seconds is 31.709 years
yermom
1/27/2006, 09:24 PM
I'd never get 1000 songs on one of those. By which I mean you drastically cut down your numbers when you start putting on classical music with half-hour long tracks.
yeah, that's pretty optimistic... what might be cool is if you could downsample as you moved stuff onto it
proud gonzo
1/27/2006, 09:29 PM
Movies are at 24fps but TV is at 29.97fps. You'll want to redo your numbers.
;)
yeah, well I was talking about film anyway really
GottaHavePride
1/27/2006, 09:47 PM
yeah, that's pretty optimistic... what might be cool is if you could downsample as you moved stuff onto it
Heh. also, with the music I listen to downsampling = the debbil. ;)
Oldnslo
1/28/2006, 11:26 AM
Take 1,000 One Dollar bills. Put them down on the ground (in a festive pattern, if you wish) and then stack $999 more on each one. You now have 1000 stacks of $1000. That's a million. In a festive pattern.
Do that 1,000 more times and you've got your first billion.
proud gonzo
1/28/2006, 02:53 PM
i've got another great example... it'll just take me another hour or two to calculate
yermom
1/28/2006, 02:54 PM
Take 1,000 One Dollar bills. Put them down on the ground (in a festive pattern, if you wish) and then stack $999 more on each one. You now have 1000 stacks of $1000. That's a million. In a festive pattern.
Do that 1,000 more times and you've got your first billion.
i'm gonna try this tomorrow
SoonerInKCMO
1/28/2006, 03:25 PM
i've got another great example... it'll just take me another hour or two to calculate
I wonder what it is... http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y52/ToddG/39.gif
proud gonzo
1/28/2006, 03:28 PM
how many times you'd have to read "War and Peace" to read a billion characters.
the answer: A LOT.
Penguin
1/28/2006, 03:42 PM
or...
a million seconds is 11.57 days
a billion seconds is 31.709 years
Woah! I'm over a billion seconds old! :(
Okieflyer
1/28/2006, 03:45 PM
"How big is a billion? If a billion kids made a human tower, they would stand up past the moon. If you sat down to count from one to one billion, you would be counting for 95 years. If you found a goldfish bowl large enough hold a billion goldfish, it would be as big as a stadium."
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its press releases:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.
Newbomb Turk
1/28/2006, 03:47 PM
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.
Lazy assed, overpaid gubment workers.
Okieflyer
1/28/2006, 03:51 PM
Lazy assed, overpaid gubment workers.
We need to stop spending all of that money on Wasteful contractor money. ;)
soonerbrat
1/28/2006, 07:53 PM
"How big is a billion? If a billion kids made a human tower, they would stand up past the moon. If you sat down to count from one to one billion, you would be counting for 95 years. If you found a goldfish bowl large enough hold a billion goldfish, it would be as big as a stadium."
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its press releases:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.
except a billion seconds is only 31.7 years. that's not 1959
proud gonzo
1/30/2006, 11:32 PM
MY FINAL ANSWER:
Films are shown at 24 frames per second, so for every second you watch a movie you see 24 individual images.
To view one billion frames you would have to watch movies nonstop for 482 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes, and 26 2/3 seconds.
That means you would have to sit through "Gone with the Wind" 2917.8 times
OR all 5 "Rocky" movies 1305.3 times
OR all six "Star Wars" movies 863.7 times
GottaHavePride
1/30/2006, 11:40 PM
How rong would it take to eat one birrion robster craws?
SoonerInKCMO
1/31/2006, 12:02 AM
how many times you'd have to read "War and Peace" to read a billion characters.
the answer: A LOT.
I'm still waiting for the right answer to this. :mad:
proud gonzo
1/31/2006, 12:04 AM
well, I was working on doing a character count.... I got through book 5 (of 15 + 2 epilogues) and I got tired of it.... So i might resume the count eventually. but not tonight. I have to read stuff for a quiz tomorrow. :O
btw--you'd have to read the first 5 books 1146.87 times.... so i'm estimating you'd probably have to read the book about 380 times.
GottaHavePride
1/31/2006, 12:17 AM
How rong would it take to eat one birrion robster craws?
Oh, and with very sloppy math - and assuming you could maintain half of world-record pace (which, for lobster-eating is 11.5 pounds in 12 minutes) - eating one birrion robster craws would take you, at minimum, 227 years. nonstop. No stopping for pooping.
one billion is equal to the number of proton-antiproton collision events our experiment had recorded to tape by august of 2004.
since then, we've been steadily racking up more and more events too.
to give you an idea of how small that is: our machine produces 1 "bunch crossing" (which in cartoon terms is a gob of protons moving through a gob of antiprotons) every 396 nanoseconds, in which one or more collisions occur. we call that an 'event'. this gives us an initial event rate of about 2.5 MHz. Our rate TO TAPE however is limited to 50-60 Hz. meaning that we actually record one out of every 50,000 events. (which is fine with us, because a whole lot of the events are just junk. soft scatters which don't produce any new and interesting results).
so in reality, one billion isn't really all that much.
yermom
1/31/2006, 12:25 AM
Oh, and with very sloppy math - and assuming you could maintain half of world-record pace (which, for lobster-eating is 11.5 pounds in 12 minutes) - eating one birrion robster craws would take you, at minimum, 227 years. nonstop. No stopping for pooping.
i don't know why, but "robster craws" cracks me up every time i hear it or see it
proud gonzo
1/31/2006, 12:35 AM
Deck the harrs with bows of horry, fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra...
TUSooner
1/31/2006, 09:07 AM
Movies are at 24fps but TV is at 29.97fps. You'll want to redo your numbers.
;)
That's what I was gonna say.
C&CDean
1/31/2006, 09:34 AM
one billion is equal to the number of proton-antiproton collision events our experiment had recorded to tape by august of 2004.
since then, we've been steadily racking up more and more events too.
to give you an idea of how small that is: our machine produces 1 "bunch crossing" (which in cartoon terms is a gob of protons moving through a gob of antiprotons) every 396 nanoseconds, in which one or more collisions occur. we call that an 'event'. this gives us an initial event rate of about 2.5 MHz. Our rate TO TAPE however is limited to 50-60 Hz. meaning that we actually record one out of every 50,000 events. (which is fine with us, because a whole lot of the events are just junk. soft scatters which don't produce any new and interesting results).
so in reality, one billion isn't really all that much.
You, sir, are a weird mother****er.
TIA.
Howzit
1/31/2006, 09:39 AM
so in reality, one billion isn't really all that much.
On the flip side of the coin, the number of hairs tracked on Dean's head since football season approaches zero, ergo, a billion is a whole bunch.
You, sir, are a weird mother****er.
TIA.
nope. Im as normal as they come. its the other 6 billion people on this planet (you included) that are wierd as all get out. ;)
soonerbrat
1/31/2006, 09:52 AM
i don't know why, but "robster craws" cracks me up every time i hear it or see it
a guy i know had this as his avatar:
mmmm...runch
http://emerg.syslog.com/~jwilson/pics-i-like/40e7f51515b89787.jpg
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