All the World's Gold in One Cube

How much space would all the gold ever mined take up? Far less than a mountain: melted into a single cube, it would be only about 74 feet (22.6 m) on each side, just a little shorter than a tennis court. The World Gold Council puts the total at about 222,600 metric tons, and since a cubic centimeter of gold has a mass of about 19.3 g, that's only about 11,500 cubic meters. This video also converts the total to kilograms and to troy ounces (about 7.2 billion), explains the cube root, works out that a walk around the cube's base, about 300 feet (90 m), takes only about 70 seconds, and estimates what all that gold is worth: roughly $29 trillion at late-2026 prices. Try it yourself: ▶ https://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/metric-tons-to-kilograms.htm ▶ https://www.metric-conversions.org/length/meters-to-feet.htm Chapters: 0:00 The question 0:22 How much gold? 1:02 From mass to volume 1:52 The cube 2:18 Familiar comparisons 2:53 Takeaway Sources: • World Gold Council: How much gold has been mined?: https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold • Metric Tons to Kilograms conversion calculator: https://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/metric-tons-to-kilograms.htm • Royal Society of Chemistry periodic table: Gold: https://periodic-table.rsc.org/element/79/gold • Meter to Feet conversion calculator: https://www.metric-conversions.org/length/meters-to-feet.htm • Tennis court (Wikipedia, citing ITF Rules of Tennis): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_court • Outdoor Walking Speeds of Apparently Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (Sports Medicine, 2021): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7806575/ • NIST Handbook 44 (2024), Appendix C: https://www.nist.gov/document/nist-hb-44-2024-appendix-c-general-tables-units-measurement • World Gold Council: Gold prices: https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-prices • LBMA Gold Price: https://www.lbma.org.uk/prices-and-data/lbma-gold-price/lbma-gold-price • Trading Economics: Gold: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/gold Is there anything else you'd like us to cover? Let us know in the comments below.