I don't think ogged intended for you to actually put up a post about fractions.
"600 pounds of copper balls" != "a 600 lb copper ball". But you knew that.
Now, the mass of a penny is 2.5g, but a penny is only 4.5%Cu. So how many pennies could you get out of your massive balls?
Not large!
Too large to fit in your mouth.
3: does my television work get me residuals?
Seriously, is no one else weirded out by this? I was expecting it to be much, much larger.
(i almost feel silly for bothering to correct this, but the u.s. penny is actually only 2.5% Cu. I was looking at the Canadian penny earlier, and we all know they're not nealry as much fun.)
Copper balls make poor neuticles.
I was expecting it to be much, much larger.
Oh, Labs.
I probably would have guessed a 30-inch diameter, so off by 100%, but I don't kow if that's much much larger. I guess metal is pretty dense, eh philosophy guy?
I was expecting it to be much, much larger.
As the actress said to the bishop, etc.
A cubic meter of water weighs a tonne, which is probably more than you'd think, because 1m x 1m x 1m doesn't seem like all that much space and water is a lot less dense than metal. Oddly, it still sounds like a lot even when you know that a litre of water weighs a kilo and it's just a question of multiplying by a thousand.
Nobody's talking about how much money this is worth? Haven't any of you gotten quotes for plumbing work lately? Copper is very darn expensive, people.
(Alternatively: Don't you know there's a war on?)
12: Eight month low on the 29th.
Copper futures for March delivery fell 5 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $2.845 a pound at 9:36 a.m. on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, after dropping to $2.84, the lowest for the most-active contract since April 20. The metal has fallen 30 percent from a record high of $4.04 in May as higher inventories and slower economic growth cut demand.
On the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months fell $90, or 1.4 percent, to $6,290 a metric ton as of 2:33 local time. Earlier, prices touched $6,250, also the lowest since April 20.
Still, copper will end the year up almost 40 percent in New York, the fifth straight annual increase, on rising demand from China, the world's fastest growing economy, and on increased purchases from investment funds. The metal gained 41 percent in 2005, 39 percent in 2004 and 49 percent in 2003. Copper in London was up 44 percent for the year, heading for its biggest annual gain in three years.
At 2.84/lb, that's a touch over $1700.
Labs's 600-lb. balls are too heavy, so copper thieves are turning to bronze sculpture.
Junkies love copper. Untraceable, easy to unload due to demand.
That's why, after my grandmother died, and nobody was watching they stole all the pipes. (That was after they cleaned all the furniture and crap out of her house, since they couldn't get to the pipes otherwise.)
m, they left the mounted antlers hanging on a fence down the street
Bubbles!
I was thinking the same thing. Entrepreneurship, you know.
How does one go about unloading a bunch of stolen copper? Would junk yards take on the job of melting down and reconstituting, say, a broken bronze sculpture?
Forget where I read it (maybe here), the zinc in a penny is more valuable than the copper, and is worth more than a penny (about 1.2 cents, I think). There are laws forbidding the destruction of large numbers of pennies and limiting how many you can export (10000, I think.)
My friend from Iceland said that the lowest-denomination Icelandic coin was popular for use as a washer, since washers cost more than the value of that coin. It was made of some soft metal that was easily punctured.
Would junk yards take on the job of melting down and reconstituting, say, a broken bronze sculpture?
they would have it out your hands faster than you can say "reconstituting". They'd saw it up and/or bash it so it was unrecognisable and put it in the van to the smelter.
Labs: big dork or biggest dork?
Pennies come to about $2 a pound, based on a not-too-recent trip to the bank with a year's worth.
A lot of the great sculpture in history has been melted down, sometimes to make jewelry with (small gold scuptures) and sometimes to make weapons with (bronze, copper, etc.) Stone is a lot better choice.
Everything you need to know about scrap dealers: during the blizzard of '96 a dealer stole an 18-foot, 50 ton bronze propeller from a warehouse in PA. The propeller was en route to FL from Hoboken when the driver (and Police escort) decided to wait out the storm. When they went back the next night (they transported it by night), the prop was gone.
This is too close for comfort to a GRE question.
In Re: 23, I am shocked that the nobody has seized the punning opportunities presented by my use of the phrase "big dork". Too easy?
I mean, what's Unfogged without the easy cock jokes?
I demand more posts that end with a calculation involving Avogadro's number. This density stuff is for patzers.
OT and I am sure the cool kids know this already but the music player at this site is pretty sweet:
http://hype.non-standard.net/now
12: Eight month low on the 29th.
But that ($2.8/lb) is still double what the price was 18 months ago.
Theft of copper has increased as the global price has reached all time highs. One of the unexpected consequences of China's voracious demand.
Where's that guy who comments from Chile (neil?)? They've been swimming in money selling copper to the Chinese.
also, since I've now won the thread - isn't this post a discretion error?
isn't this post a discretion error?
Isn't Labs travelling for a conference?
You can play the "that's a lot less than I thought!" game with many elements. There are several where if you got all the naturally occuring material of that element together in one place, it would fit inside a small box.
There are several where if you got all the naturally occuring material of that element together in one place, it would fit inside a small box.
i.e. mycockium
Theft of copper has increased as the global price has reached all time highs. One of the unexpected consequences of China's voracious demand.
Word. Lead and other metals affected too. Ammo prices are ridiculously high these days. Reloading your own rounds helps offset that a bit, but even the components are much higher than they were even a few years ago.
Not much you can say to the cops when they pull you over & find a 600-lb copper ball in your back seat. "Uh, Officer, that's my ... melted-down penny collection?"
I read on Fark or somewhere a story how they were putting chainlink fences around all new house construction now because the meth addicts will steal the plumbing. So now they steal the chainlink fence and the plumbing.
A physics problem:
How much force does it take to rip a guys balls off?
I don't want to associate apo with this NC event, so I deliberately omitted the apostrophe. Uh huh.
43 -- doesn't it depend on how quickly you're trying to rip them off? And also, on how ... um, massive they are?
Anyway, from the article: "All we can tell you is that the injury was done with her hands. There were no weapons used."
Damn.
I absolutely do not belive these numbers. just based on how big dumbells are. I scrolled the whole thread, looking for the math correction i'm sure is in the works.
Plates deceiving because of low volume to surface area ratio. Increasing the dimensions of a solid like a cube or sphere sees the increase in volume go up much quicker than the surface area.
Or to look at it another way, the initial density figure of 8920 kg/m3 means a cube that's only a meter high weighs 8920 kg, or approx. 19,669 pounds. Doesn't take a very big solid of copper to get up to 600 pounds.
Yoyo, I had the same thought when I first got my answer. "No way-- a 45 lb plate is about that big in diameter!" Even imagining it rotating around its diameter to form a sphere, etc. But gswift is right about the volume.
Also, in fairness to my intuition, when I first worked it out, I was using 8.9 g/cm3, which was harder to visualize.
Are weight plates generally made of copper these days? That is, is "pumping iron" anarchronistic now?
Aren't they frequently made of sand?
Quick, what's the rt density of sand?!
Well I think it is not as heavy as a solid metal, but it's pretty heavy. Denser than water for sure.
A quick intertubes-ing says silicia is 2.6g/cm3, although I can't seem to find numbers for sand itself. Which makes sense, I guess, although you wouldn't think any particular mixture would skew it that much. Well, maybe gold dust. Does that count as sand?
Mixtures won't skew it much, but I'd expect the actual density of settled sand to be a fair bit lower than your 2.6 g/cm3 figure. Small particles with sharp edges tend to pack really inefficiently.
The thing about sand, instead of a piece of silica, is that you need to know the bulk density of the material. Loose sand could easily have a density of 1.0 g/cm3 (= water at 25C), but could be compacted to ~ 1.8 g/cm3 (possibly more).
And slightly less lazy intertubes-ing gives "sand, dry" as 1602kg/m3 and "sand, loose" as 1442. "Sand, rammed" (ob. buttsex joke) is 1682.
Now I get to be sad that no one felt like helping me out by being the straight man for the obvious coming bad joke in 53. Woe.
Seriously, though: sand? Is that why the newer-fangled color-coordinated ones are usually encased in paint or rubbery stuff or whatever?
Are weight plates generally made of copper these days?
Still often iron. But take a glance at irons position on the old periodic table. Just three protons short of copper. Not far off in density.
Yeah, it's about 1g/cm3 difference, which is quite unhuge. I was just intrigued by the possibility that there's been a chance in barbell composition, and the possible reason for same. (Especially if the sand thing is true, because dude, what?)
dude, what?
Check out the weight sets that are for sale in your local sporting goods store -- some of them are plastic discs which can be filled with sand. Plastic discs + sand to fill them = Way way cheaper than metal discs, and I suspect not as good, though I don't really know what the difference in quality would be. (I can't actually guarantee that this is still true, but last time I was looking at buying a set of weights it was, several years back now.)
The economics would certainly make sense, but do they come pre-sealed? I mean, spillage.
Is that why the newer-fangled color-coordinated ones are usually encased in paint or rubbery stuff or whatever?
The rubber-clad ones are for less foot-breakage, I think.