Orders of Magnitude Explained

Okay, first, click this link to the CIA World Factbook about Account Balances.

Now, scroll all the way to the bottom. See how the negative number there is ten times bigger than the number above it? That's an order of magnitude.

That's also how much money we owed the rest of the world last year.

Did You Know?

The Sahara Desert used to be a lush forest, thousands of years ago, where lots of people lived. Then it dried up through temperature changes of just a couple degrees. It took about 150 years or so, a geological blink of the eye. But long enough for some of the people to move, probably to Egypt.

Of course, then people started grazing goats in the grasslands and scrublands around the desert, and goats ever bloody everything, which only made the desert bigger.