© 2005 Beth Vernon
Tell Me How much is a Million? Oh and can I count it in my Lifetime? Oh
Tell me how much is a million? Gotta get it in my head
The sheer magnitude of the number Can't be denied
For a million seconds is almost 12 days
And the number can be measured in so many ways
If you stack the paper up a million sheets high
It would be 300 feet toward the sky
Tell Me How much is a billion (Oh) Can I count it in my Lifetime? Oh
Tell me how much is a billion? Gotta get it in my head
The sheer magnitude of the number Can't be denied
Now a billion seconds has all the hopes and fears
that a person would live through in over 30 years
And a billion sheets would make a cosmic stepping stone
That would make a round trip to the ozone
Tell Me How much is a trillion ? Oh
I know I can't count it in my lifetime? Oh
Tell me how much is a trillion? Gotta get it in my head
the sheer magnitude of the number can't be denied
Let's say we take a trip A trillion seconds back through time
The first man who could write this would not even be alive
30,000 B.C. is a long,long time before we know just what happened, for sure
And if we stack the paper up to help us comprehend
The pile would be so high you could not even see the end
Yes a trillion sheets would need an awful lot of room
Like a third of the way to the moon
BRIDGE
But when I think of all the distances to places in the universe
A Trillion is a number very small
For the nearest star (besides our sun) is 25 trillion miles away
And the galaxies go on and on and we find more every day
The numbers of the distances would not even fit on a page
A million billion trillion gazillion miles away...
Tell Me How much is a Million? I know I can count it in my lifetime Oh
Tell me how much is a million
I think I got it in my head but the sheer magnitude of the number
just blows my mind Oh ya know, ya know It just blows my mind
Oh it blows my mind