Apple becomes first US company to be valued at $2 trillion

Image source, Reuters

Image caption, Apple was created in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne

Apple has become the first US company to be valued at $2 trillion on the stock market, that's around 拢1.5tn!

A trillion is a million million, or, in other words, a lot of phones, tablets, headphones and computers.

The tech giant has reached the milestone just two years after becoming the world's first trillion-dollar company in 2018.

Its share price hit $467.77 in the US on Wednesday to push the company's value over the special mark.

The only other company to reach the $2tn level was oil giant Saudi Aramco last December, but its value has since slipped back to $1.8tn.

What does $2tn look like?

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption, Apple's current boss is Tim Cook

An easy way of recognising it is that two trillion has 12 zeros.

Another way of looking at it is it's two million million.

If you wanted to try counting all those two trillion dollars I'm afraid you just wouldn't have enough time by yourself.

It would take you 63,418 years, based on counting $60 a minute.

Image source, TONY CAMACHO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Image caption, How much does $2tn weigh? Let's just say it's a lot of elephants

A single one dollar note weighs one gram, according to the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

So that means $1 million dollars weighs 10kg exactly, a billion weighs 10 tonnes, so two trillion will weigh 20,000 tonnes.

A full sized African bush elephant weighs 6,000kg on average. So $2tn dollars weighs around 3333 elephants!

Image source, Reuters

Image caption, Eden Hazard is one of Real Madrid's star players

Ever fancied owning your own football club?

Well, the richest football club in the world is Real Madrid, which is valued at $4.23 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

This means Apple could buy the club 472 times and still have a little bit of leftover cash to spend in the transfer window.

Image caption, Take me to the moon... well, you could be half way there with $2tn

Finally, you couldn't quite get to the moon if you stood on a stack of dollar bills, but you would get pretty far.

A one dollar note is 0.0109cm thick so if you stack two trillion of these notes on top of each other, it is estimated to measure 218,440 kilometres tall.

That is equivalent to more than half the way from the earth to the moon.