Question

(a) Suppose the U.S. national debt is about $15 trillion. If payments were made at the rate of $2,500 per second, how many years would it take to pay off the debt, assuming no interest were charged? Note: Before doing these calculations, try to guess at the answers. You may be very surprised. yr (b) A dollar bill is about 15.5 cm long. How many dollar bills attached end to end would it take to reach the Moon? The Earth-Moon distance is 3.84 108 m. dollar bills

Answer 1

Answer:

Ans.

a) To pay off the debt, it would take 190.26 years at a rate of $2,500/second

b) The quantity of dollar bills attached end to end that would take to reach the Moon is  2,478,116,129  

Explanation:

Hi, we are going to need to do some adjustments to the speed equation of physics (for a.) and a unit conversion for b.

Let´s see the equation that we need for a.

$PmtSpeed=\frac{Debt}{time}$

Therefore.

$time=\frac{Debt}{PmtSpeed} =\frac{15,000,000,000,000Dollars}{2,500\frac{dollars}{second} } = 6,000,000,000Seconds$

Now, we need to convert this to years, that is:

$6,000,000,000Seconds *\frac{1Year}{ 31,536,000Seconds } =190.26Years$

Now, for b) we need to establish the leght of a dollar bill in meters, that is.

$Dollar(m)=15.50cm*\frac{1m}{100cm} =0.155m$

And now, since we know the length of a dollar bill in meters, let´s find out how many would it take to reach the moon.

$Bills(Units)= 384,108,000m*\frac{1DollarBill}{0.155m} = 2,478,116,129 Bills$

Best of luck.