This weekend, I, with the supplied help of Russ and Chris, moved very heavy furniture from my grandmother's to my house. Thanks for the help! It was very much appreciated. While driving in the truck with Russ, we were discussing weights when we wondered what the weight would be of a life size statue, say of bill Gates, made of solid gold. We assumed bill's weight to be 180lbs. We struggled a bit since we were without reference materials. we tried calling a few physicists we knew, but they were off physicisting I guess.
Once I got home, I slept. Then I decided to figure this out as it was bugging me. Off to Google!
First convert to metric.
180lbs = 81.6466266kg = 81646.6266g
We'll assume the density of human flesh to be equivalent to water. (This makes things simple)
Convert to volume.
1 liter of water (1000cc) = 1000 grams
1 cc of water = 1 gram of water
Density of gold = 19.3g/cc
So, 81646.6266g x 19.3g/cc
1575779.89g = 1575.77989kg
3473.99999 pounds
So, around 1 3/4 tons.
That's less than Russ thought, but more than I thought. Must be a glass half full/half empty kind of thing.
Resources used, Google conversion of lbs to kg. Density of gold.
2 comments:
I once figured out I was 5 femtofortnights in height (that is, it takes light that long to travel my height).
Jeff,
Thanks for the kind words. I was happy to help. As to our Bill Gates, gold statue question... you took the question 90% of way, but didn't fully answer the question. For me, the question was "Can Bill Gates afford to build a pure gold life-sized statue of himself?" To finish answering the question you need convert the 3474 pounds of gold to kilograms (3,474lbs = 1,576kg) because I checked the price of gold ($657 per Troy oz.) and found that 1kg = 32.15 troy ounces. Therefore 1576kg x 32.15troy = 50,668.4 Troy Ounces. 50,668.4 x $657 per troy ounce = $33,289,138
So the answer to the question as I saw it was definitively: Yes.
At $33.3 million plus artistic services, Bill Gates definitely has the pharaoh-like ability to have his likeness cast in pure gold.
Nice to know.
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