Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

t1_j2yppn7 wrote

Did you know a solid piece of gold the size of a deck of cards can be made so thin that it covers the square footage of a tennis court?

114

t1_j2z11f1 wrote

I actually thought it could be made a lot thinner. Is that a full deck of cards?

13

t1_j31gq9n wrote

Let's do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. A mole of gold has a mass of about 197 grams, in the ballpark of our hypothetical deck of cards. The lattice constant of gold is about 0.4 nm (in a fcc structure, but let's assume simple cubic for simplicity). A commenter mentions a thickness of 2 atoms, but that's a very fancy setup, so let's go for something that's feasible with modern techniques currently applied in industry: 10 atoms. Arrange our tenth of a mole into a square and we get sides of a bit more than 2*10^(11) atoms, corresponding to a square with 80m sides. Actually not that far off from a tennis court - I would have guessed it would be bigger.

12

t1_j2zne7n wrote

I recall one that went something like “you could take a 1cm cube and turn it into a thread a mile long”.

8

t1_j2zse10 wrote

Which means it can be easily stretched to make fine electronic cables used in medical equipment.

8

t1_j2zujn8 wrote

That would be a waste of gold.

3

t1_j2zyprx wrote

Not at all, gold leaf has all kinds of applications. For example, it’s the best material for spacewalk sun visors.

9

t1_j302kjq wrote

But spread out on a tennis court, it's pretty wasteful.

11

t1_j30ah9e wrote

You can still use it after.

Gold is easily recycled

4

t1_j30boh1 wrote

Good luck scraping gold leaf off a tennis court.

6

t1_j30cta8 wrote

Do you understand how easy it is to recycle gold off electronics? What makes you think a tennis court would be a difficult surface to separate gold from?

You dont need to remove it from the tennis court, you can dig up the whole tennis court and dissolve the gold in a solution and reconstitute it as a purified ball of gold. You can just shovel the whole thing into a smelter and melt it off. Everything not gold will float to the top.

This is a non-event, if people are willing to dig a mile underground through quartz and granite using explosives and mercury baths to get gold dust out of the ground, why do you think a tennis court will be any type of obstacle? It would be picked clean that day.

7

t1_j30df40 wrote

The wind would blow half of it away.

3

t1_j30e4us wrote

People pan for gold dust in the streets of NYC. You are underestimating how quickly that wafer thin gold will be pulled up by whoever is working it.

5

t1_j30bz8r wrote

You just burn the court and separate the gold from the ash.

1

t1_j30dmw1 wrote

It would just blow away with the smoke.

2

t1_j31s7cz wrote

Nah, gold dust is too heavy. It's a common separation/reclamation technique for gold in old flumes or carpets or other materials in workspaces where fine gold particles were common.

1

t1_j31xcil wrote

You're thinking of gold particles. Ultra thin gold flakes are easily carried away in the wind. The ratio of surface area to weight mean that they experience a lot of drag relative to gravity.

1

t1_j31xn59 wrote

And you don't think a fire will alter the flair structure.

1

t1_j31y4af wrote

The melting point of gold is around 2000F. No way you are getting anywhere close to that in a open tennis court fire. The gold will not be effected by the fire except to be torn apart by the plumes of smoke that would also carry it away.

1

t1_j3048an wrote

“mined” is the key term here. there’s been tons of river gold and in areas like australia when they were first colonized, there were nuggets in some areas just laying on the ground.

98

t1_j31brtt wrote

Well in Victoria, which was the centre of the gold rush, there's still at much gold in the ground as was removed over the past 130 years.

5

t1_j33kbst wrote

The amount in our crust is actually relatively small amount, even if you were to mine at all. It's estimated that the amount we can reasonably extract from the crust would amount to a solid cube 100m by 100m thick. Contrast that with how much gold is currently in the Earth's core, since heavier elements sink. If you were to take all the gold in the Earth's core and spread it evenly across the surface of the earth it would cover the entire surface of earth in a sold 1m of gold.

3

t1_j33lasc wrote

Damn. That’s crazy. I know that it’s comes up through magma and volcanic activity. But had no idea how much was in the core. And also how much that is i. the crust that will never be mined. Makes you think that the future for mining rare elements may really be in asteroids.

2

t1_j2zg31s wrote

The messed part is the only real use for gold only came around 50 years ago when we started making computer parts since it doesnt corrode

22

t1_j2zscy5 wrote

It’s for this reason it was used for coins and other items before that so I’m not sure “real use” is accurate here.

17

t1_j30cmco wrote

Right, and gold leafing on books actually protects the pages, makes handling easier, and prevents paper cuts. I'd call that a real use. Gold fillings, a material that can actually be cold impact welded in an environment as bad as a human mouth and wing break down after installation. Gold mending of materials. The low melting point makes it easy to work, ideal for repairs.

All of those are genuine historic uses of gold that aren't just GOLD PRETTY. I mean, the attractive end result sure doesn't hurt, but the properties of the gold itself are the reason to choose it.

12

t1_j30eyvt wrote

Nope. It’s value in the past didn’t come from being shinny and pretty. Its physical and chemical properties like not being corroded, it’s usage in alloys and the fact that didn’t cause allergic or other reactions when in contact with skin is what made it valuable.

8

t1_j32fk0v wrote

Plus the fact it's hard to mine having a high stock to flow ratio. This makes it a good store of value over time. Unlike fiat currencies that no longer adhere to the gold standard and devalue over time because more is produced.

1

t1_j2zcx6o wrote

This may be true? An Olympic pool could hold 50,000 tons of gold and the estimated amount of gold ever mined is 200,000 to 250,000 tons.

I'm not sure where that estimate comes from, tho.

20

t1_j2zdked wrote

Probably the association of goldsmith's or some shit.

10

t1_j2zgod4 wrote

If they said the amount of gold mined last year I would 100% accept that but I don't know how they estimate all the gold mined by ancient people like the Egyptians or the Inca.

6

t1_j2zpx0x wrote

The mining rate increased so much during the Industrial Revolution that the total gold mined in the millennia before probably fits in the margin of error for the estimate

13

t1_j2z6uf9 wrote

I honestly dont know if i feel that's surprisingly low or about what I expected tbh.

14

t1_j2zsi8g wrote

Also wondering why this is an interesting amount.

0

t1_j30xfky wrote

For starters that amount of gold is relatively smaller to the current value of the world economy and a lot of people wants to reconstitute the Gold Standard.

Not to mention a portion of the total gold "mined" could be missing since people do tend to bury their treasure way back then.

So in actuality, there is less gold peesent.

1

t1_j2yuv9o wrote

you can't swim in gold

8

t1_j30auv6 wrote

Yes you can. Will hurt like a bitch but gold can be melted down or dissolved, and you can swim in that for as long as your flesh holds up.

2

t1_j30cu0f wrote

Aqua regia! Wonder how long a person could survive. Can't imagine it's measured in anything longer than minutes.

1

t1_j30d15v wrote

Yeah a couple minutes tops would be my guess. Horrible experience but you'd be swimming in gold lol

1

t1_j30gpuz wrote

TIL that all the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in somebody else's name.

3

t1_j33ux3d wrote

I am old enough to remember when the Gatlin Brothers performed that live on TV and changed it to “in Kenny Rogers’ name”.

1

t1_j2zp0qr wrote

It seems like that would really suck for the people in those areas who want to go swimming.

2

t1_j33ako0 wrote

What I'm hearing is "the world can only support 3 Scrooge McDucks"

2

t1_j2zstvz wrote

I think someone did this measurement with platinum too. I remember hearing that it would all fit into a medium-sized room, could be wrong though.

1

t1_j30b8b2 wrote

Wait til/if we figure out how to mine an asteroid.

1

t1_j33rjs2 wrote

I'll hold my breath.

... are we close ? How about now?

1

t1_j30bwof wrote

The size of an Olympic Swimming Pool is about 85,000,000 fluid ounces.

1

t1_j30l0ib wrote

Three solid gold Olympic size swimming pool size ingots? That seems like quite a bit of gold.

1

t1_j30wsa3 wrote

Dont tell that to my countrymen. They believe that the Marcoses are lending the US gold with 1k USD interest per hour.

1

t1_j30yx79 wrote

I first saw this stat in a National Geographic article, about gold, from about 2012. At the time it was “two” swimming pools, not three .

1

t1_j33bixz wrote

That’s nothing. All sand mined could fill at least four olympic size swimming pools!

1

t1_j315ehn wrote

Someone explain to me how Scrooge McDuck ended up with an entire pools worth of gold coins then

0

t1_j30b0fe wrote

Dude i get excited when i find a dollar bill from the 60s money has and always will be reprinted. Eat it dick fucker

−3

t1_j2zutbt wrote

No it couldn't. First, it would be impossible to collect it all. Even if you did manage to get it, you'd have to melt it to make it fit. Even if you managed to melt it and make it fit, the Olympic swimming pool would collapse because it can't support the weight.

−14