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From: kilian@sequoia.cray.com (Alan Kilian)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Teleutopias
Message-ID: <1991May23.190537.24175@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 23 May 91 18:34:47 GMT
References: <1991May23.060019.5074@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab)
Organization: University of Washington
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Will Overington asks:

> This has led to other thoughts.  For example, how many atoms of
> gold would 1fp buy?  Imagine, in a virtual reality scenario,
> having a token dropped through the air towards your hand and it
> sparkle as a swirling galaxy of as many golden suns as this
> number of atoms of gold!

I liked this problem so I thought I would have a go at it.

Given: Gold costs $500.00 US an ounce (Or there abouts)

Given: An ounce is 29 grams (Or there abouts)

Therefore: gold costs $17 US per gram

Given: 1 mole of gold weighs 197 grams. This is 6x10^23 atoms of gold.

Therefore: 1 gram is 3x10^21 atoms of gold.

Given: 1fp (FemtoPennyUS) is 1x10^-15 penny 

Therefore: 1fp buys 6x10^-16 grams of gold

Therefore: 6x10^-16 grams of gold at 6x10^23 atoms per gram is 1.8x10^7 atoms

Cool 18 million atoms of gold.

Now this is an _Order-of-magnitude_ solution so please don't pick on the
price of gold or the number of grams in a troy ounce unless I am off by
enough to cause my answer to be wrong by more than an order of magnitude.

 -Alan Kilian kilian@cray.com                  612.683.5499
  Cray Research, Inc.           | If god had meant us to use the metric system
  655 F Lone Oak Drive          | he would have given us ten finger and ten
  Eagan  MN,     55121          | toes. The author of _Light Elements_