Cette Fille Mary

jtotheizzoe:

The Physics (and Economics) of the Scrooge McDuck ‘Gold Coin Swim’

At The Billfold, Matt Powers used some simple calculus to calculate exactly how much money you’ll need to aquire in life to replicate Scrooge McDuck’s gold coin vault swim:

“In most money circles (insider tip: “money circles” is a term used by only the most elite investors), wealth is measured exclusively by how closely one can recreate this famed animation. It has come to represent success in America and anything less than doing the backstroke amongst a sea of Earth’s rarest metal should be considered an abject failure. A main problem of this measure, however, is that there is no agreed-upon Scrooge McDuck quantity of gold. In order to give the young investor a goal to shoot for, and to clear up this age-old question once and for all, the following is a precise judgment of exactly how money you need to be successful. “

Hint: It’s a crapton (about $31 billion with inflation). But of course, this exercise in futility wasn’t enough for me. I’ve always wondered something else: Even if he could dive into it (which Peter Griffin painfully reminded us is impossible, as it’s a pile of solid metal), how is he not crushed under the weight of gold?

For the sake of me only having to do easy math, I’ll take Matt Powers’ money calculations as accurate. If, as in the video above, Scrooge dives from one pile to another, he will be under the weight of at least 5 vertical feet (~152 cm) of gold. If Scrooge’s body is 36 cm tall and maybe 15 cm wide, a realistic size for a duck, the column of gold pressing down on his body will be the volume of an elliptical cylinder. My back-of-the-envelope calculation puts that at around 65,000 cm³ of gold.

But it’s randomly stacked gold coins, not a solid mass, so let’s assume that 10% of the volume is air. That brings the volume of gold to 58,500 cm³. Pure gold is very heavy, with a density of 19.32 g/cm³, which means the column of gold that Scrooge dives under would weigh 2,492 pounds.

It’s essentially the same as getting run over by a car. He’d be flat. Flat broke(n). 

Previously: The cartoon laws of physics!

(↬ The Billfold)

(Source: janemargoliss)