How many dollars are in one mole of pennies? How long with the money last (in years) if it was spent at a rate of $1 billion a second?

Answer 1

1 mole of pennies = 6.02x10²³ pennies (that's a lot of pennies). How many dollars is that?

6.02x1023 pennies x $1/100 pennies = $6.02x10²¹

Now, how many years would this amount last if you spent it at a rate of $1 billion a second?

So, 1 billion dollars is 1x10⁹ dollars. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. There are 24 hours in day and we'll use 365 days in a year (as a round number). Thus, we can find the # years the $ will last.

6.02x10²¹ dollars x 1 sec/1x10⁹ dollars x 1 min/60 sec x 1 hour/60 min x 1 day/24 hours x 1 yr/365 days = 1.9x10⁵ years. That's 190,000 years.

This problem illustrates just how large a number a mole of something is.