Quadrillions to Billions (short Scale) (quad to B)
1 quadrillion equals 1,000,000 billions (short scale) exactly.
How to convert quadrillions to billions (short scale)
To convert quadrillions to billions (short scale), multiply the number of quadrillions by 1,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 0.000001.
billions (short scale) = quadrillions × 1,000,000
Example: 10 quadrillions = 10,000,000 billions (short scale).
Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.
About these units
Quadrillion (quad)
10¹⁵ in the short scale.
Quadrillion is 10¹⁵, a thousand trillion, on the short scale, and it is a number most people meet only through energy statistics. The U.S. Energy Information Administration defines a quad as a quadrillion British thermal units and notes that national energy use typically reaches quadrillions of Btu. Its examples include 35.43 quads from petroleum, 33.61 from natural gas, and 8.17 from coal.
The name uses the Latin quadri-, four. It appears among the terms in Nicolas Chuquet's unpublished manuscript of 1484, alongside byllion and tryllion. On the long scale the same 10¹⁵ is called a billiard, and a quadrillion means 10²⁴. The SI prefix for 10¹⁵ is peta-. A quadrillion seconds is about 31.7 million years.
1 quadrillion = 1×10¹⁵ pieces (exactly).
Sources: U.S. EIA: British thermal units (Btu); Wikipedia: Names of large numbers; BIPM SI Brochure, 9th edition (2019)
Billion (short Scale) (B)
One thousand million (10⁹). The meaning used in the US, UK and most English-speaking countries today.
For decades British and American speakers meant different things by billion. The short-scale sense, a thousand million, took hold in the United States in the 19th century, while Britain kept the older meaning of a million million. From the 1950s the short scale spread through British technical writing and journalism, and Winston Churchill had remarked in 1941 that for practical financial purposes a billion was a thousand millions.
The official break came on December 20, 1974. Asked in Parliament whether ministers would be required to use the traditional British meaning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson answered no, explaining that billion was now used internationally for 1,000 million and that using it any other way would cause confusion. He conceded it could still be read as a million million and asked colleagues to avoid ambiguity. Today a billion is 10⁹, matching the SI prefix giga, and the UN projected that world population would reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.
1 billion (short scale) = 1,000,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Hansard, 20 Dec 1974: Billion (Definition), written answer; Wikipedia: Billion; United Nations: Day of Eight Billion
Related conversions
- Billions (short scale) to quadrillions (reverse)
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- Quadrillions to dozens
- Quadrillions to lakhs
- Quadrillions to millions
- Quadrillions to crores
- Pieces to billions (short scale)
- Dozens to billions (short scale)
- Lakhs to billions (short scale)
- Millions to billions (short scale)
- Crores to billions (short scale)
- Pairs to billions (short scale)
- Hundred to billions (short scale)
- Gross to billions (short scale)
- Thousand to billions (short scale)
- Trillions (short scale) to billions (short scale)
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See all counting & quantity units.