• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Let’s say that cube is 4.5’ a side. That’s 91.125 cu ft. Tungsten weighs 1,201.738 lb/cu ft. Which means the cube weighs 109,508.38 lb.

    That’s an impressively sturdy floor.

    Currently, tungsten is selling at about $340 USD/ton.

    The block weighs 54.7542 tons.

    So this is indeed a decent prize at $18,616 USD.

    All you have to do to claim your prize is get it home.

    Edit: corrected to a less whelming but still difficult to transport prize thanks to chiliedogg.

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      My immediate response was to do the same calc. But using SI units, because I don’t live in Myanmar or the USA.

      I figure that it’s a cube, and judging by the size of the lucky winner, I would guess that the sides are 1.5m. 3.375m^3 at 19.254 g/cm^3 is roughly 65 tons. According to https://www.metal.com/Tungsten/202212260004 tungsten bars are trading for 49USD/kg. IDK where you got 340 USD/ton, but we seem to differ.

      65 tons at 49 USD/kg is 3’185’000 USD.

      I’d say that a solid homogeneous of tungsten should probably fetch a fair bit more than my price. Casting a cube like that is not going to be easy. Tungsten is rather reactive in the molten form, and has to be kept from air. Just alone keeping 65 tons of molten tungsten under a protective layer of inergen gas is going to be challenging.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        No idea why the difference in price. I checked again and it still shows $340/ton on a UK site, another shows $335/ton, some higher for powders or carbide, some way lower for scrap.