Via Greg Mankiw I came across this cool way to wrap your head around how much a trillion dollars really is.  I used it in class last week to demonstrate the magnitude of US GDP, which is around $15 trillion.

One TRILLION dollars… What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I’d take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

The author takes you from $100….

to a $1 million dollars….

and finally to $1 trillion dollars…..

Check out the entire post here