Post by TimberWolf7.62 on Oct 20, 2009 13:21:16 GMT -5
Money in the movies is so frequently mishandled – that is, it weighs more and takes up more space than is portrayed. I was moved to write this after seeing Ocean’s Eleven, the George Clooney version. It was a good film, but they badly mangled the money scenes. I knew fairly closely how much money weighs and how much space it takes up, so just some simple math off the top of my head told me they were in error, but I went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) web site for the exact figures.
The web site is www.moneyfactory.gov, and it is amazing to me that someone with a sense of humor managed to sneak this address by the bureaucrats.
Anyway, in this movie, they steal over $163,000,000. Let’s look at just how much that amounts to (Yes, the following involves math – but fun math!).
Weight – “The approximate weight of a currency note, regardless of denomination is (1) one gram. There are 454 grams in one (1) U.S. pound, therefore, there should be 454 notes in (1) one pound (Avoirdupois system)”, according to the BEP. If they are $100 bills (the largest in circulation), that’s $45,400 per pound. Therefore, 1 million dollars is 22.03 pounds and $163,000,000 = 3,591 pounds.
In Ocean’s Eleven, they have $80,000,000 in six duffle bags. That would be 1,762.4 pounds, or 293.73 pounds per duffle bag. I don’t think so. They were throwing them around like they weighed 30 pounds.
Size – “Our present sized currency measures 2.61 inches wide by 6.14 inches long, and the thickness is .0043 inches”, again, thanks to the BEP. Let’s just round that to 2.5 inches by 6 inches. That gives a neat 15 square inches, or 1.25 square feet, for a bill. It takes 233 bills to make a stack an inch high, or $23,300 in $100 bills. A million dollars, then, makes a stack 42.92 inches tall. That’s 4.47 cubic feet.
The full amount of $163,000,000 would then be 6995.96 inches – 583 feet tall! Times the 1.25 square foot figure derived above, that’s 728.75 cubic feet of money. How big is that? Try a solid stack of bills six feet tall, six feet wide, and 20 feet 3 inches long!!! I have a Ford Explorer that could hide behind that stack with more than enough room to spare!
Let’s be very generous and say that a duffel bag is 2 feet by 2 feet by 4 feet – extremely generous proportions, but it still only adds up to 16 cubic feet. So $163 million would require 45.55 duffel bags. Obviously, $80 million could not fit into 6 duffel bags at all.
Of course, if the money is in smaller denominations, then it will be heavier and bulkier. Here is what $1 million amounts to:
$100 – 22.03 lbs – 4.47 cubic feet
$50 - 44.06 lbs – 8.94 cubic feet
$20 – 110.15 lbs – 22.35 cubic feet
$10 – 220.30 lbs – 44.70 cubic feet
$5 - 440.60 lbs – 89.40 cubic feet
$1 – 2,203 lbs - 447 cubic feet
To give you some idea of what size typical containers are:
Briefcase – 18” x 12” x 3” = 0.375 cubic feet – so there is no way it would hold $1 million, even in $100 bills.
Cardboard box, like that used for copier paper – 10” x 17” x 12” = not much over 1 cubic foot.
Shoebox – 7.5” x 12.5” x 5” = 0.272 cubic feet.
So the next time you sell a truckload of blow --- err, I mean the next time you see large amounts of money being handled on film, figure a million dollars in $100 bills is 22 pounds (10 kilos), or a 43-inch tall stack, and take it from there.
Gold is also mishandled in film. A cubic inch of gold weighs 315.2 grams = 10.13 troy ounces = 11.06 avoirdupois (ordinary) ounces. A cubic foot of gold weighs 545.225 kilos = 1188.6 pounds (avoirdupois).
A typical brick, of the type used in residential construction for the past 50 years or so, is 9.5” x 2.5” x 2.5” = 59.375 cubic inches. If it were made of gold, it would weigh 656.69 ounces, or 41.04 pounds. Not an unmanageable weight, but in some movies, you see people stacking up three or four bigger ingots than this, which tends to get a little unbelievable. And just by the way, with gold prices at about $300/oz., that brick would be worth just over $197,000.
The web site is www.moneyfactory.gov, and it is amazing to me that someone with a sense of humor managed to sneak this address by the bureaucrats.
Anyway, in this movie, they steal over $163,000,000. Let’s look at just how much that amounts to (Yes, the following involves math – but fun math!).
Weight – “The approximate weight of a currency note, regardless of denomination is (1) one gram. There are 454 grams in one (1) U.S. pound, therefore, there should be 454 notes in (1) one pound (Avoirdupois system)”, according to the BEP. If they are $100 bills (the largest in circulation), that’s $45,400 per pound. Therefore, 1 million dollars is 22.03 pounds and $163,000,000 = 3,591 pounds.
In Ocean’s Eleven, they have $80,000,000 in six duffle bags. That would be 1,762.4 pounds, or 293.73 pounds per duffle bag. I don’t think so. They were throwing them around like they weighed 30 pounds.
Size – “Our present sized currency measures 2.61 inches wide by 6.14 inches long, and the thickness is .0043 inches”, again, thanks to the BEP. Let’s just round that to 2.5 inches by 6 inches. That gives a neat 15 square inches, or 1.25 square feet, for a bill. It takes 233 bills to make a stack an inch high, or $23,300 in $100 bills. A million dollars, then, makes a stack 42.92 inches tall. That’s 4.47 cubic feet.
The full amount of $163,000,000 would then be 6995.96 inches – 583 feet tall! Times the 1.25 square foot figure derived above, that’s 728.75 cubic feet of money. How big is that? Try a solid stack of bills six feet tall, six feet wide, and 20 feet 3 inches long!!! I have a Ford Explorer that could hide behind that stack with more than enough room to spare!
Let’s be very generous and say that a duffel bag is 2 feet by 2 feet by 4 feet – extremely generous proportions, but it still only adds up to 16 cubic feet. So $163 million would require 45.55 duffel bags. Obviously, $80 million could not fit into 6 duffel bags at all.
Of course, if the money is in smaller denominations, then it will be heavier and bulkier. Here is what $1 million amounts to:
$100 – 22.03 lbs – 4.47 cubic feet
$50 - 44.06 lbs – 8.94 cubic feet
$20 – 110.15 lbs – 22.35 cubic feet
$10 – 220.30 lbs – 44.70 cubic feet
$5 - 440.60 lbs – 89.40 cubic feet
$1 – 2,203 lbs - 447 cubic feet
To give you some idea of what size typical containers are:
Briefcase – 18” x 12” x 3” = 0.375 cubic feet – so there is no way it would hold $1 million, even in $100 bills.
Cardboard box, like that used for copier paper – 10” x 17” x 12” = not much over 1 cubic foot.
Shoebox – 7.5” x 12.5” x 5” = 0.272 cubic feet.
So the next time you sell a truckload of blow --- err, I mean the next time you see large amounts of money being handled on film, figure a million dollars in $100 bills is 22 pounds (10 kilos), or a 43-inch tall stack, and take it from there.
Gold is also mishandled in film. A cubic inch of gold weighs 315.2 grams = 10.13 troy ounces = 11.06 avoirdupois (ordinary) ounces. A cubic foot of gold weighs 545.225 kilos = 1188.6 pounds (avoirdupois).
A typical brick, of the type used in residential construction for the past 50 years or so, is 9.5” x 2.5” x 2.5” = 59.375 cubic inches. If it were made of gold, it would weigh 656.69 ounces, or 41.04 pounds. Not an unmanageable weight, but in some movies, you see people stacking up three or four bigger ingots than this, which tends to get a little unbelievable. And just by the way, with gold prices at about $300/oz., that brick would be worth just over $197,000.
