Since i just impressed myself with how big a number a billion is, i remembered a "fun" fact about playing cards.
Did you know that when you shuffle a deck of cards, you are with 99.99% certainty ending up with unique order that has never happened before.
So, how big is the number of combinations for a deck of cards? Well, its big, like really big.
I've seen a a really good explanation of how big 52! actually is.
- Set a timer to count down 52! seconds (that's 8.0658x1067 seconds)
- Stand on the equator, and take a step forward every billion years
- When you've circled the earth once, take a drop of water from the Pacific Ocean, and keep going
- When the Pacific Ocean is empty, lay a sheet of paper down, refill the ocean and carry on.
- When your stack of paper reaches the sun, take a look at the timer.
The 3 left-most digits won't have changed. 8.063x1067 seconds left to go. You have to repeat the whole process 1000 times to get 1/3 of the way through that time. 5.385x1067 seconds left to go.
So to kill that time you try something else.
- Shuffle a deck of cards, deal yourself 5 cards every billion years
- Each time you get a royal flush, buy a lottery ticket
- Each time that ticket wins the jackpot, throw a grain of sand in the grand canyon
- When the grand canyon's full, take 1oz of rock off Mount Everest, empty the canyon and carry on.
- When Everest has been levelled, check the timer.
There's barely any change. 5.364x1067 seconds left. You'd have to repeat this process 256 times to have run out the timer.
but the British once used a different standard
