A Million Times

July 16, 2008 – 8:52 am

When you were a kid (some of you may still be), how many times do you recall your parents or some authority figure prefacing an admonition with "if I told you once, I told you a million times"? Well, how long would it take them to tell you something a million times?

There are two ways to calculate this. The first would be on a sliding scale based on how many times a day they told you. For example, if they told you once a day, it would take 2737 years, 311 days. On the other hand, if they had to tell you 1,000 times a day, it would only take 2 years, 270 days. BUT, if they were telling you 1,000 times a day, assuming it was spaced evenly over 16 hours (with 8 hours for sleep), they'd have to be telling you this thing once every 57.6 seconds.

The second way to calculate it is to take the phrase they were going to tell you, use a stopwatch to see how long it took to say it, then multiply that by a million and do some fun math with it. Since my second son will be born later this year, I thought "stop hitting your little brother" would be an appropriate million-time phrase.

An online stopwatch records my time on that as 2.57 seconds. So, saying it a million times would take 2,570,000 seconds. If I repeated it non stop, 24/7, it would take me 29 days, 17 hours, 53 minutes, and 20 seconds. But that's unrealistic. At 14 hours a day (8 hours for sleep, 2 hours for meal and bathroom breaks), it would take me 50 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes, and 20 seconds.

A few other ways to look at 2.57 million seconds:

• 14,278 three-minute eggs... in a row.
• If you commute an hour a day each way, get 5 holidays, 5 sick days, and two weeks of vacation, it's your daily commute for 1 year, 23 weeks, and 2 days.
• Enough time to watch "WALL-E" 428 times with a 3-minute bathroom break after each showing.
• Just short of 714 hours in the car, which is one of the prime places you're probably saying it.

So what are some Rough Equivalents you can come up with for the 2.57 million seconds it would take to say "stop hitting your little brother" a million times? Post them in the comments below.