Trying to visualize 50 million people (Blog post #5)

The poverty line in the United States is drawn at American families of four who make $23,850 or less per year. Most Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty some point in their lives between age 25 and 75. The percentage of Americans under the poverty currently is about 14.5%. This is almost 50 million Americans of our 320 million population. 50 million is a difficult number to visualize, but I found these images on http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/ that can help to put it into perspective. The MegaPenny Project takes the penny, an everyday object, to help people grasp just how much a thousand, a million, a billion or even a trillion really is.

This image shows a 5'10, 180 pound man standing next to one million pennies. The wall is 5 feet by 4 feet by one feet, with a 9 inch cube next to it. It is equal to ten thousand dollars and weighs 3.14 tons, or 6,273.6 pounds. This is only a fiftieth of the amount of Americans in poverty!

This next image shows ten million pennies next to the same size man. This cube is 6 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet, weighs 31.3 tons, and if all the pennies were in one stack, it would be 9.88 miles high. If they were laid flat, they would fill .9 acres. This is only a fifth of the Americans in poverty!

Although there was no picture of 50 million pennies, it would be five of this last picture. That would be 5 6x6x6 foot cubes of pennies. Now try to imagine each penny as a person. This is how many people are living in America in poverty! It is difficult and sad to realize that this many humans in America alone do not have an acceptable amount of money, something that people like us often take for granted.