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The annual expenditure of the US federal government is approximately 4 trillion dollars. If a one dollar bill is 0.0001 meters thick, how many meters tall would a stack of 4 trillion one dollar bills be? Write your answer in scientific notation. For reference: 1 trillion =10¹² meters

User AlonS
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Let's start by comprehending the given data. The thickness of a single one dollar bill is 0.0001 meters, and the expenditure is 4 trillion dollars. 1 trillion is expressed as 10¹². Therefore, 4 trillion would be 4 times 10¹² which is 4*(10¹²).

A stack of these bills means we are piling each one dollar bill on top of another. By doing this, the thickness of each bill is added up, creating a tower of dollar bills.

For finding the total height of this stack, we multiply the thickness of a single bill by the total number of bills, which is our expenditure. That is:

Total thickness = expenditure * bill thickness

Replacing these with the values we have:

Total thickness = 4*(10¹²) * 0.0001 = 400,000,000.0 meters

Therefore, a stack of 4 trillion one dollar bills would be 400,000,000.0 meters tall.

We can express this into scientific notation. The scientific notation for 400,000,000.0 ends up being 4.0 x 10^8.

So, the stack of 4 trillion one dollar bills would be 4.0 x 10^8 meters tall.

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