Trivia Time! Guess how many…
Okay, so this is sort of like that game where you guess how many jelly beans are in the jar – except in this case it would be really tough for you to cheat by trying to count them all manually.
How many cells would you guess are in one pint of blood? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?
Try 4,000,000,000,000.
The majority of that gang of four trillion is comprised of red blood cells. (You’ve got about about 30,000,000,000,000 of those in your body.) A few hundred billion white blood cells and platelets are floating around in there too.
For some perspective on these gigantic numbers… if you tried to count to four trillion (at an average rate of two numbers per second) it would take you 63,377 years. That means that if cavemen started counting the day they painted these, they still wouldn’t be halfway through the count.
Mind boggling!
Anyway, if you’ve got a few minutes to share a few of those cells, you can go here or call 1-800-GIVE LIFE. Then you you can brag to your friends that you’ve donated trillions to the Red Cross!
P.S. Want to have your mind further boggled? Read the article that inspired this post. It compares the number of cells in the body to the number of stars in a galaxy. Amazing!
[Also, hat tip to Mental_Floss for the link and Rob Pongsajapan for the photo.]
2 comments
Nice! I wrote the article that inspired this post; hooray for Portland!
And I’m a big fan of this; I’ve given 4 gallons of blood over my lifetime. Keep up the good work!
Wow, I didn’t even realize you were a Portlander as well.
Four gallons? That’s like 128 trillion cells! Or enough blood to fill up almost four people! That’s fantastic.
Btw, if you discover any other cool disaster or blood related factoids be sure to pass them on to us. We totally geek out on this stuff.
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