How much weight is a $100 bill?

(This is the original, unedited version of the letter that appeared in the 3/31/97, Monday Business Section of the Washington Post.)

Since the time that I read the best-selling book "Innumeracy" a few years ago I've had a lot of fun thinking creatively about large numbers. Regrettably, with all the Federal cutbacks there are fewer and fewer large numbers to be found here in Washington DC. But looking elsewhere in the country, one number that continues to grow at exponential rates is Bill Gates' personal worth.

Just how big is $20 billion? Here are two creative ways of visualizing the size of this wealth. First let's weigh the money. To make the weight more interesting, lets weigh $100 bills. A friend of mine with a scientific scale tells me that $100 bills weigh about one gram each. It takes just a few steps to calculate how many tons of $100 bills there are in $20 billion.

There are 200,000,000 one hundred dollar bills in $20 billion. For simplicity sake, let's say that 500 grams equals one pound. Dividing 200,000,000 by 500 gives 400,000 pounds of $100 bills. Dividing this by 2000 pounds/ton gives 200 tons of $100 bills.

Now if this is not a vivid enough picture of the quantity of this wealth, picture this. Remember the times when you played the game Monopoly as a kid and one player accumulated huge piles of money on his or her side of the playing board? Just for fun, let's figure out how high Bill Gates' stack of money rises up if he stacked all his wealth in five even piles of $100 bills?

Here again we start with 200,000,000 one hundred dollar bills. (I always like starting with 200,000,000 one hundred dollar bills - - - don't you?) Let's assume that it takes 2000 one hundred dollar bills to measure a stack of bills one foot tall. That gives us 100,000 feet of one hundred dollar bills. Divide this by 5280 to arrive at the number of miles of $100 bills. (18.9). Now divide 18.9 miles into five equal piles. Doing the math gives me five equal piles of $100 bills, with each pile stacked 3.78 miles high.

Now don't let it ever be said that Bill Gates is a stingy person. With 18.9 miles of hundred dollar bills to his name, he has been known to dig down deep into his pocket to give 100 one hundred dollar bills to various community organizations around the country. As I calculate this, this would be equivalent to subtracting two inches from 18.9 miles of $100 bills. Please join with me in applauding the magnitude of such gifts.

He gives us two inches, but we'll take a mile. (Leaving him 17.9 miles of $100 bills for him to make it to the end of the month.) Will he make it, do you think?

Phil Shapiro
[email protected]
http://www.his.com/pshapiro/hoarded.wealth

(Do you have creative ways of thinking about Bill Gates' hoarded wealth? Send them over my way and I'll include some of the best of them here on this web page. Make sure you check the math, because I will deduct points from your grade if you don't show your work. Also, if anyone out there can't offer a hard copy record of their math notes from college, I'm afraid they're going to have to return the $20 billion dollars - - - and stay after class to think more about their behavior.)

Thanks are owed to Ellen Pennington, of Cincinnati, Ohio, for playing a major role in making this web page happen.

Whether you have a $1 bill or a $100 bill, all United States bills weigh the same amount. Each dollar bill weighs 1 gram or about 0.035 ounces. Each bill has a height of 2.6 inches and a width of 6.14 inches.

The size and weight of these bills weren’t always the same, however. Dollar bills used to be 7.375 inches by 3.125 inches in size, but the size was reduced in 1929 in order to cut down on manufacturing costs.

How much money is 20 pounds of $100 bills?

Since we know that one $100 bill weighs 1 gram or 0.035 ounces, we can figure out how much money is in 20 pounds.

First, we need to find out either how many grams or how many ounces equal 1 pound. There are 16 ounces in 1 pound, which means that there are about 457 $100 bills in a single pound.

We then multiply that number by 20 to get about 9,142.88, which tells us that there are about that many $100 bills in 20 pounds. We can then multiply that number by 100 to find that 20 pounds of $100 bills is equal to about $914,285.71.

We can double-check this math by coming at the problem from grams instead of ounces.

There are about 453.592 grams in 1 pound. We divide 453.592 by 1, the number of grams a dollar bill weighs, and then we multiply by 20 to find that there are 9,071.84 $100 bills in 20 pounds. This gives us an overall value of $907,184.00.

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The math comes out slightly different whether you’re working from grams or ounces because of how you round any of the numbers that have decimals.

Using these two formulas, however, we can say that 20 pounds of $100 bills is worth between $907,184 and $914,285.71.

20 pounds of $100 bills will have a value of around $908,000.

It also makes sense that the monetary value would fluctuate a bit because the weight of the bills will also fluctuate slightly.

Although all dollar bills weigh exactly 1 gram when they’re newly minted, older bills might have tears or pieces missing, which can cause a decrease in weight.

Some bills might also have accumulated dirt, which can cause an increase in weight.

What are dollar bills made of?

Although we refer to dollar bills as paper money, they’re not truly made of paper. Paper is generally made of wood pulp.

Dollar bills or $100 bills, on the other hand, are actually made of fabric.

The bills are made up of a blend consisting of about 75% cotton and 25% linen. All $100 bills also feature a security ribbon that’s woven into the paper, which helps people check for counterfeit bills.

Cloth is used instead of paper for a few reasons. First, this helps to make the dollar bills more durable.

It’s also much more water-resistant, which is why, if you accidentally wash a dollar bill in the washing machine, it comes out looking almost the same as it went in.

Cotton is also the popular choice for paper money because the government liked the idea that they would be purchasing cotton from United States cotton farmers.

How many $100 bills are in a pound?

How many dollars is a pound weight?

How big is $1 million in $100 bills?

How much does $200000000 weigh in $100 bills?