The National Debt in Math Class

From the Tech The Plunge blog site:

Visualizing the National Debt in Math Class [Infographic]

by JEFFREY THOMAS on JANUARY 5, 2011

The United States National Debt just recently passed 14 trillion dollars!!!

There are not many people that can really visualize or put into context this enormous amount.

One method to try and grasp this amount is to look at the U.S. National Debt Clock.

LifesLittleMysteries has taken another approach with this infographic on the U.S. National Debt.

Once again, this is an infographic that has many educational uses.  Being a former math teacher, investigating these numbers and putting them into context is a great topic for the majority of grade levels.

After looking at the infographic, you could come up with an almost infinite amount of questions and/or projects regarding this data.  Just a few:

• What is the thickness of a one-dollar bill?  How did you arrive at this number?
• How many one-dollar bills would it take to equal the tallest building in the United States?  In the world?
• How tall would a stack of 100 dollar bills be?  You could actually test this and talk about error margins.
• Just for fun, how many one-dollar bills would it take to reach the moon?
• Pick your favorite item.  How many could you get for 14 trillion dollars?