This is probably not helpful, since I can’t recall the math or exact units used, but I had an econ instructor who would describe different sums of money and compare them using sand. If a grain of sand is a dollar, then a million dollars is a bucket of sand (or some such…I don’t recall, but probably not that much). If a million dollars is a bucket of sand, then a billion dollars is a dump truck of sand (again, not right, but you get the idea).
Anybody want to take a shot at this analogy?
The XKCD money chart is helpful here. Click once on the chart to get a zoomable/scrollable version. It helps lend a sense of scale to the dollar amounts you encounter during every day conversation - everything from the price of a cup of coffee up to the scale of national economies, and everything in between.
One million feet equals 189.39 miles.
The biggest crowds I see routinely are at sold-out sports events… which isn’t close to a million people. That might be 1/18th of a million. Or it might be two seasons of home games for an NFL team (compared to the guy in front of you in the hot dog line.)
Your first seven steps walking from New York to San Francisco.
Or 1 cubic centimetre per cubic metre - same thing, but I think both of those cubes are pretty easy to visualise.
Actually you wouldn’t be too far off to express it as Americans who have been in space vs. total number of Americans.
One more: If you took the seven living people who have walked on the moon and dispersed them evenly in the state of Arizona, that would be approximately 1 in a million.
1 inch in 16 miles is a little less than 1 PPM
A grain of rice in a 5 gallon bucket of water is approx 1 PPM
From Stephen Leacock, “The Force of Statistics,” 1910:
“Do you know that every ton of coal burnt in an engine
will drag a train of cars as long as…I forget the
exact length, but say a train of cars of such and such
a length, and weighing, say so much…from…from…hum!
for the moment the exact distance escapes me…drag it
from…”
“From here to the moon,” suggested the other.
“Ah, very likely; yes, from here to the moon. Wonderful,
isn’t it?”
One Lego block vs the Hulk
The exact number of Legos used isn’t given, but it would be on the right scale.