My Car at 200,000 Kilometers

Unlike the poor guy in Ohio in the Volt with many miles, I drive little.  I purchased the car exactly 16 years ago and it turned 125,000 miles today.   In the 30 months since June 2012 when the car turned 111,111 miles I have driven only 13,889 miles.    This is 460 miles a month.  125,000 miles is 201,170 kilometers.   Let us round this to 200,000 kilometers for simplicity sake.

200,000 kilometers is equal to 200 million meters which equals 200 trillion microns. This distance travelled also equals 200 quadrillion nanometers.  The new Intel CPU chip has circuits of 20 nanometer line width.   Therefore my old C280 has gone ten quadrillion times the circuit width in the CPU on the latest computers that bring you this blog.  I actually worked on designing a semiconductor fabrication facility for Intel that was its first sub micron Fab.  This was in 1989 and we broke the micron barrier.  Old news as line widths are fifty times smaller.  My PC in 1989 was a Packard Bell with an 8086 processor.  My car then was a 1982 Datsun 280 Z.  I must like 2.8 liter engines.

Ten quadrillion is ten to the power sixteen and the car is sixteen years old.    I love numbers.  I love my old car and should take better care of her.   I have no need for Preparation H as the seats in the C 280 are superbly comfortable and I do not sit much in the car.  The US debt has exceeded 18 trillion dollars and this is 1.8 quadrillion cents.  I have a gazillion cents sitting in drawers and jars around the house but a gazillion is a drop in the ocean of 1.8 quadrillion so I will not bother to cash in my cents.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/