Billion= Trillion in Britian?

That really doesn't make any sense at all. So, by your teacher's logic, 1 trillion grains of sand in the United States is equal to 1 billion grains of sand in the UK. :rolleyes:
yes, that's exaclty right.

Doesn't make sense...
A trillion is a lot more than a billion, so how can the money add up to much more somewhere else?

Unless it's because of the simple fact that £1 could = £2 somewhere else for example, in which case, that does make sense.
Hmm. . .
Me thinks superman22x may have left out a bit of important information in the original post.

Was the Spanish teacher discussing the differences in the conversion of monetary value between the two countries?
nothing to do with conversion of currency, more to do with naming conventions.

1,000,000,000 = One Billion
1,000,000,000,000 = One Trillion

Thats the way I thought it was.

:confused:
US (short scale measurements)
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion

UK
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - milliard
1,000,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand billion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion

(as you can see, a UK billion is 1 thousand times bigger than a US one.
a UK trillion is a million times bigger than a US one
and a quadrillion is a thousand million/milliard/billion times bigger than a US depending on what name you give to the number 1 followed by nine zeros)




In other news, a pint in the UK is also bigger than a pint in the US.
1 us pint = 473 ml
1 uk pint = 568 ml
So our pint are almost a pint and a quarter of your pints.

which is also why when someone in the US says, I drank ten pints, people in the UK say what really, because that's the same as us only drinking 8 pints.

in someone in the UK drinks ten pints, that's like someone in the us drinking 12 pints.

our beer in stronger too... but that's a different story.
 
There we go, someone cleared it up. I knew we had members over there, just waiting for someone to come and clear it up for us, lol.

I didn't know that thing about the pints either, that's interesting.
 
yes, that's exaclty right.



nothing to do with conversion of currency, more to do with naming conventions.


US (short scale measurements)
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion

UK
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - milliard
1,000,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand billion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion

(as you can see, a UK billion is 1 thousand times bigger than a US one.
a UK trillion is a million times bigger than a US one
and a quadrillion is a thousand million/milliard/billion times bigger than a US depending on what name you give to the number 1 followed by nine zeros)




In other news, a pint in the UK is also bigger than a pint in the US.
1 us pint = 473 ml
1 uk pint = 568 ml
So our pint are almost a pint and a quarter of your pints.

which is also why when someone in the US says, I drank ten pints, people in the UK say what really, because that's the same as us only drinking 8 pints.

in someone in the UK drinks ten pints, that's like someone in the us drinking 12 pints.

our beer in stronger too... but that's a different story.

Hmm! A Lot of "pint glasses" hold just under 500ml.... Maybe they are American Pints! (y)
 
overall, the UK has the long scale system.

but I think it's just a bit of an archaic oldy thing that we keep around to confuse foreigners, (like the monarchy).

when the government talks about a billion pound loan, they use the short scale system.
when the uk government talks about a trillion pound deficit then use the short scale system, (so it's the same as the US)

Hmm! A Lot of "pint glasses" hold just under 500ml.... Maybe they are American Pints! (y)

and that's where it gets more difficult, pint glasses used in most pubs do hold 500ml, just you'll get slightly less beer because of the head.

and these aren't pint glasses they are what are European counterparts call demi litres

(half litre), a British pint is more than half a litre... (as I said 568 rather than 500 ml).

some glasses are bigger still and have a pint line etched into them a little way below the top, this allows for a full pint + a head on the pint.

go to Germany (where the sign of a good beer is a head almost as big as the beer), and the glasses seem massive, but then they are only half filled with the rest of the glass space being taken up with a foamy head.




the fact that a British pint is 95ml more than an American pint also means that a british gallon (8 uk pints) it bigger than a American gallon (8 us pints)
us = 3784ml
uk = 4544ml
difference = 760ml, (more than a pint difference in either scale of measurement).
 
Easiest way to think about it is in the us a billion is 1000 million but in the UK a billion is a million million. As said above it's just our olde worldly way of naming numeric increments and is nothing to do with currency conversion.

Don't know how much the old sand and tree metaphors are helping anyone, lol
 
I remember my primary school teacher telling me that when she was holiday she helped pick pineapples of trees.
 
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