Friday, March 30, 2012

How tall would a stack of 540,000,000 one-dollar bills be?

Tonight's Mega Millions lottery drawing is worth $540,000,000. If you won, and collected the money in one-dollar bills, and stacked them, how tall would the stack be?

A million one-dollar bills would be about 358 feet tall. So 540,000,000 one dollar bills would be 540x358 feet high, or 193,320 feet high. That's about 36 miles high.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Why do Venus and Jupiter appear so close when they're so far apart?

Recently after sunset Jupiter and Venus have appeared close in the western sky. If they're so far apart, how is this possible?

Venus is only visible a few hours before sunrise or after sunset. This is because its orbit is inside the orbit of the earth - closer to the sun than we are.

Jupiter, because its orbit is outside the orbit of earth, can appear anywhere in the night sky (actually, it can be in the day sky, too, but it isn't bright enough to see).

The reason Jupiter can appear "near" Venus is because we are looking across the solar system at it. Jupiter is somewhere on the OTHER side of the solar system from us.