Golden Treasure
Jan. 7th, 2005 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakSome Math Useful for Storytellers
When reading tales as a kid about peasants finding little barrels full of gold I didn't have any idea of what it was really worth. But today I though of a fairly good way to explain how much gold is really worth and how hard it is to move to a child.
At a price of about $400 a troy ounce a million dollars of gold will come in at 2,500 ounces. Converting to metric to make this easier (31.1 grams to the troy ounce) that's 77,758 grams (with rounding) or 77.7 kilos. That weighs more than me! But how big is it? Ah here is where metric makes it easy. Specific gravity of gold is 19.32 dividing that in gives us cubic centimeters. Divide by 1,000 to get liters, 4.024. A six pack of soda equals approximately 2 liters. So two six packs would be the volume of about a million dollars worth of gold coins. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Gold does have a pretty stable value. So though a million dollars has meant different times in history you can see that a small (very heavy) box holding about the volume of a six pack would be quite a treasure for a peasant (or anyone else) to find. Though he might have a bit of a time carrying it home. In any era half of that would by a very great house, though there are quite a few more houses like that today and we pay for more amenities and so on.
When reading tales as a kid about peasants finding little barrels full of gold I didn't have any idea of what it was really worth. But today I though of a fairly good way to explain how much gold is really worth and how hard it is to move to a child.
At a price of about $400 a troy ounce a million dollars of gold will come in at 2,500 ounces. Converting to metric to make this easier (31.1 grams to the troy ounce) that's 77,758 grams (with rounding) or 77.7 kilos. That weighs more than me! But how big is it? Ah here is where metric makes it easy. Specific gravity of gold is 19.32 dividing that in gives us cubic centimeters. Divide by 1,000 to get liters, 4.024. A six pack of soda equals approximately 2 liters. So two six packs would be the volume of about a million dollars worth of gold coins. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Gold does have a pretty stable value. So though a million dollars has meant different times in history you can see that a small (very heavy) box holding about the volume of a six pack would be quite a treasure for a peasant (or anyone else) to find. Though he might have a bit of a time carrying it home. In any era half of that would by a very great house, though there are quite a few more houses like that today and we pay for more amenities and so on.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-07 09:40 pm (UTC)Excellent. This is similar to an article I wanted to write about relative historical wealth, based on that meme that was going around for a while... (You are the 2 millionth richest person in the world! That puts you in the top 7% economically) ...in which I pointed out what it was really like to be in the top 7% economically in previous eras. (early Roman Empire and late feudal Europe, specifically)
Except, now I think you should write it. :) Hey, if you've already spent this much time thinking about it... and a non-fiction article like that would sell to, say, Strange Horizons, pretty easily.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-08 05:28 am (UTC)What I'm saying in a long winded way is that I don't want to even put a toe into the realm of historical research. I'm a writer because when I write I'm god and no one can contradict me. If there is one thing I've learned from the internet it is "don't touch the historical research tar baby".