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The annual expenditure of the US federal government is approximately 4 trillion dollars. If a one dollar bill is .0001 meters thick, how many meters tall would a stack of 4 trillion one dollar bills be? (Write in scientific notation, please.)

a. 4 × 10^13 meters
b. 4 × 10^12 meters
c. 4 × 10^14 meters
d. 4 × 10^15 meters

User Edgard
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

To find the height of a stack of 4 trillion one-dollar bills, calculate the volume of a stack of 100 bills, find the number of stacks needed, calculate the area of a football field, and divide the number of stacks by the area of the football field.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the height of a stack of one-dollar bills that would equal the US federal government's annual expenditure of 4 trillion dollars, we can follow these steps:

  1. Calculate the volume of a stack of 100 one-dollar bills, which is 9 in³.
  2. Find the number of stacks needed to reach 4 trillion dollars.
  3. Since one trillion dollars is equal to $1 × 10¹², and a stack of one-hundred one-dollar bills is equal to $10,000 or $1 × 10⁴, the number of stacks is 1 × 10¹² / 1 × 10⁴ = 1 × 10⁸ stacks.
  4. Calculate the area of a football field in square inches.
  5. A football field has an area of 6480000 in².
  6. Finally, divide the number of stacks by the area of the football field to find the height of the stack.
  7. This gives us (1 × 10⁸ stacks) / (6480000 in²/stack) = 1543.21 in.
  8. Converting to meters, we divide by 39.37 to get approximately 39.12 meters.

Therefore, a stack of 4 trillion one-dollar bills would be approximately 39.12 meters tall

User Satyendra
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