I stole this idea, but I don't think they'll mind.

Are you familiar with the Paper Clip Project?

It began as an attempt to show schoolchildren what it means that six million people died in the Holocaust. Six million is a hard number to put your head around, so the educators decided to gather six million paperclips, each one representing a person, and show the kids what it looked like. The success of the idea spawned a museum for the paperclips.

When I saw this story, I thought something similar should be done to demonstrate the 2,948 people confirmed killed in the 9/11 attacks. I don't know if that number includes the hijackers; I hope not. They don't deserve to be remembered.

My first thought was Lego's. I could build a model of the Twin Towers with 2,948 of them. But that presented a couple of problems -- I wanted the individuals to all be the same shape and color (if building a WTC model, gray would be the obvious choice) and that's not really possible buying Lego's down at the local Wal-Mart. The other problem is price -- I wanted it to be available as a classroom project if any teacher wanted to try it, and 2,948 Lego's aren't exactly inexpensive, especially if you buy them like most stores sell them, a few dozen at a time.

So I fell back on the original idea of a paperclip. I can buy a hundred of them for 38 cents. But I wanted something a little different, so I decided I would chain them all together and see how long the chain would be. #1 paperclips are an inch and a quarter long apiece. 2,948 of them should stretch out a little more than the length of a football field. That should be a vivid visualization of what 2,948 means.

I bought and chained together three boxes of them yesterday. I should be able to finish it by the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

If you know a teacher, or anyone else, who might want to do something similar, please feel free to pass the idea along.