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I was watching a documentary yesterday that claimed all of the gold ever mined could fit in the base of the Statue of Liberty. Huh? Really? It seem there would be more than that in Fort Knox.
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Speaking of which, if he wanted to could Obama go inside of Fort Knox and look at the gold there?
I don’t see why not. But the Federal Reserve Bank of New York guards a larger volume of gold. Anyone can tour their facility: This page has moved - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK
According to wikipedia, Fort Knox holds 4176 metric tons of gold or 4176000 kg. The density of gold is 19300 kg per cubic meter, so all the gold in Fort Knox has a volume of 216 cubic meters. That’s equivalent to a cube 6 meters (less than 20 feet) on a side.
First off, gold is extremely dense, significantly more so than any substance you’re familiar with (it’s nearly twice the density of lead). So you can fit an awful lot of gold in a relatively small space.
Second, Fort Knox isn’t a solid block of gold. I’ve never been inside, but I would imagine that there are aisles wide enough to drive a forklift truck through, with the gold arranged on shelves or pallets. Nor would it be very tall: Because it’s so heavy, you want to store gold pretty close to the ground.
Also, gold is so maleable that I suspect the gold on top would easily deform the gold on the bottom.
Hmm, curious. Then why is it such a big dang deal whenever an outsider gets to go into Fort Knox? Wasn’t the last time outsiders were let in was 1974?
It was Dick Cheney’s secret location. :eek:
The federal reserve holds the gold for other countries. Fort Knox is the US’s reserve. It is also a military base.
I have no idea about the building where the gold is stored, but Fort Knox is a fairly large army base. The requirements to enter an army installation are generally a valid photo ID and valid registration and insurance if you are driving. So at the very least the statement “The last time an outsider was allowed on to Fort Knox was in 1974” is certainly false.
The other thing is that “the base of the Statue of Liberty” is no little thing. It’s huge; 89 feet tall according to Wikipedia. So to compare a pile of gold to it is not to minimize the pile of gold.
According to the World Gold Council, around 158,000 tons of gold has been mined, which been calculated as equivalent to a cube a bit over 20 meters on a side. So yeah,it would fit.
Of course. I believe he regularly goes there to roll around in it.
I think they were referring to the Bullion Depository itself, not the military base the depository is located on.
I recall it being mentioned that the sets used in Goldfinger were not as far off the mark as one might think, especially seeing as they were constructed almost entirely via guesswork and with a great deal of “cinematic licence”.
How big is the McDuck money bin?
Canonically, three cubic acres. Which presents a bit of a problem, since an acre is a unit of area, not length, and therefore a cubic acre would be a unit of six-dimensional hypervolume. If one assumes that the measurement is supposed to refer to three cubes, each of which has sides of one-acre area, then you get about 772000 cubic meters
Well apparently all that gold mined in antiquity must have disappeared somewhere.
Something else to remember about gold: in most of the applications we see every day, we’re not looking at pure gold. Gold plating uses a tiny amount of gold and yet can make it look like you’ve got a solid statue. 18K gold is only 75% gold and 14K gold is just under 60% gold.