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Hey, everybody, I'm Ben.
I'm Lauren.
This is "Brain Stuff."
And our question for the day is, if you
took all of the gold in the world
and put it in one place, how much would there be?
You know, it's amazing, but the total amount
of gold in the world is a surprisingly small, like tiny,
quantity.
Well, OK.
So how do we calculate the total amount?
OK, yeah.
Great question.
If you look it up, you'll find that
the annual worldwide production of gold
is something like 50 million troy ounces per year.
And so gold has a specific gravity of 19.3.
That means that it's 19.3 times heavier than water.
So gold weights 19.3 kilograms per liter.
Oh, and a liter is a cube that measures
10 centimeters, about four inches on a side, right?
Correct.
Oh, good.
So there are 32.15 Troy ounces in a kilogram.
Oh, OK.
So therefore, the world produces a cube of gold
that's about 4.3 meters, or about 14 feet on each side,
every year.
Right, which means that all the gold produced worldwide
in one year could just about fit in the average person's living
room?
Well, yeah.
This cube does weigh 1.5 million kilograms,
or about three million pounds.
So they'd probably have to reinforce the floor
or something.
I digress, Lauren, I'm sorry.
Figuring out the total amount of gold
that's been produced by human beings in all of eternity
it is a little bit harder, though, right?
Yeah, to get at some kind of estimate,
let's figure that the world has been producing that 50
troy ounces of gold per year for about 200 years.
OK.
So 50 million for 200-- that, that number's--
That might be a little bit high.
But once you figure the fact that the Aztecs
and the Egyptians were producing smaller amounts of gold
for a really long time, like 3,000 years,
it's probably not that far off.
Ah, that's a good point.
So, OK.
So 50 million ounces times 200 years equals--
Ten billion ounces?
Oh, my God.
I m so glad you did that part.
OK.
10 billion ounces of gold then would
fit into a cube roughly 25 meters.
Or 82 feet.
82 feet on a side.
But the Washington Monument measure
what, like 55 by 55 feet and is 550 feet tall?
So that means that if you could somehow
gather every scrap of gold humankind
has ever produced together in one place,
you could only build about a third
of the Washington Monument.
So that's why it's not made out of gold.
I guess.
You guys, thanks so much for watching.
We hope that we have answered this question about gold.
All right, so that's it.
That's how much gold is estimated to be in the world.
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