11. Gold 🏆
I found this graphic on Gold.org and thought it was so neat! Its original sources were: Metals Focus, Refinitiv GFMS, US Geological Survey, World Gold Council.
As of Feb 2021, 201,296 tons is the best estimate for how much gold has been mined throughout history. By the way, 1 metric ton = 1 tonne = 2,000 pounds.
This would crazily fit into a 72 foot cube! (21.8 meters). This is the breakdown:
Jewelry ~93,253.1t, 46.3%
Bars and coins (including gold backed ETFs) ~44,384t, 22%
Central banks ~34,211t, 17%
Other ~29,448t, 14.6%
Also interesting to know that there are ~53,000 tons of proven reserves still left to be mined.
It was a fun algebra problem to figure out the sizes of each section. The key was finding out that each metric cube of gold weighs 19.3 tons. From there is was basically fill in the blank. For example, jewelry is 93,253.1 tons / 19.3 tons = 10,429.84 meters^3. I knew 2 of the sides were 21.8 m, so that left the third side to be 10.17 m.
