[flagged]
The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
211–220 of 578 posts
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, the side? That makes sense, I thought 41 sqm.
Sorry, yes, 41m-on-a-side cube, not 41m^2-sided cube. The outermost square-root in the expression takes the area of one side of the cube (which is the area of the dollars, divided by 6 to account for needing to cover the 6 sides of the cube) and pulls it down to the cube's length of one side.
Yeah, you said it correctly, but I'm not a native speaker and brainfarted "41m on a side" into "each side is 41 sqm". I thought "face", rather than "edge".
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#213nit: Technically, even if there is exactly $1M you need to account for the box price since they don't specify that it's $1M in cash but just say "what one million dollars looks like".
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#214At the complete other end there is this art piece which should contain a total of $84,000 in Danish kroner and euros, but contains a grand total of $0:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jens-haaning-take-the-money-and...
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#215It's funny how all the comments seem to assume the conclusion is correct. I think it is far more likely that it is exactly $1M (plus or minus a couple of percent margin of error), and that the packing isn't uniform. It seems extremely unlikely to me that they would fuck it up so bad as to have $500k more in the box than claimed.
I also think it’s funny that so many comments assume they would have lax accounting for the extra $500K, or that the artists could have casually asked for another $500K of old bills to use as filler and the request would have been granted. The Fed is extremely rigorous in tracking these things. It isn’t a couple guys in a room playing casually with millions of dollars. Even the retired bills are thoroughly monitored…
There was a danish artist that got a very large amount of cash to do a similar in spirit artwork.
He then named it “take the money and run” and showcased what amounted to an empty frame.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#216From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...
oof my googling skill so bad I didn't find this
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#217> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…
Rather than counting error it’s likely the ~1 ton weight of stacking bills like this would deform the lower sections and possibly stress the glass depending on thickness. So rather than random filler there may be internal structural bracing so the outside of the cube looks nice and neat. Simplest way to double check is if top and bottom corners have the same bill density.
may be they started with a $1M and with time the bills weight compresses the bills, and they have periodically to add more to fill the newly forming emptiness. Kind of inflation.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#218From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...
This thread is very informative on your chances of carrying off a heist stealing this cube.
Conclusion: Low, unless you're willing to take only a fraction of the face value.
Thinking through it though - you might be able to get away with spending the cash overseas, where it will take some time indeed for the money to be under scrutiny by banks to see if the serial numbers are out of circulation. There's then problem of getting the money there without anyone noticing, then there's the problem of what kind of characters you're going to be defrauding overseas.
All told - probably a better idea is to use all that cleverness to make a 1.5 million dollars the good old fashioned way: Spending a few years saying, "Nothing from my end" on Zoom calls.
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#219What is the point in making a display like this at all in the first place, but making it either under claimed or over filled? Who gets anything out of giving people the wrong idea about what $1m would look like? If you are commissioning the thing to be built, why might you want it to either contain more than $1m, or be hollow and larger than what $1m really is? What purpose does an incorrect display serve? A correct…
artists cant do math
[dead]
Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the movies, it's $100 bills, which are considerably more portable than $1 bills.
Would you roughly say 100x more portable?
Using somat's estimate of 49" on a side, it would roughly weigh the same as 49^3/100 cu in of solid wood. Given a range of 0.01-0.03 lb/cu-in for pine, and choosing the midpoint: 23.5 lb.
Very portable.
(Yes, it's cotton not wood, but the weight of solid cotton is hard to find, and probably not much different.)
Cross-check: bills are apparently ~1g apiece. That predicts $1M in $100-bills is 20.8 lb. Very close.