How high would a million sheets of paper be?
Solution
While paper is not all the same thickness, most common paper is similar in thickness. The easiest way to answer this question is to measure a ream (500 sheets) of paper. A ream of paper is approximately 5.2 cm thick. Your ream may be slightly different.
2000 reams is 1 million sheets and so the height will be 2000 × 5.2cm, or 10400cm, or 104 metres high.
Another way is to divide 5.2 by 500 to get the thickness of one sheet. Then multiply the answer of that calculation by 1 million. The answer should be the same.
Extension
What size bag of rice contains one million grains?
How long would it take to count to a million?
How high would one million pens reach?