Question

In 2013, the U.S. national debt was about $17 trillion. (Note: Before doing any of the calculations, try to guess at the answers. You may be very surprised. Only enter your calculated answers into the answer boxes.)

(a) If payments were made at the rate of $1138 per second, how many years would it take to pay off the debt, assuming that no interest were charged?
yr

(b) A dollar bill is about 15.5 cm long. If seventeen trillion dollar bills were laid end to end around the Earth's equator, how many times would they encircle the planet? Take the radius of the Earth at the equator to be about 6378 km.
times

Answer 1