Would you rather have 1 pound of solid gold or 40,000,000 individual Cheez-Its?
Fascinating mathematical calculations and the value of asking seemingly stupid questions.
I'm sure you see the article title up there. Answer the question: would you rather have one pound of solid gold or 40,000,000 individual Cheez-Its? Don’t search anything up on Google—just go with your gut.
Ok now we can get to the fun part. Let's answer these questions:
- How much does it cost to purchase one pound of solid gold? How much does it cost to purchase 40,000,000 Cheez-Its?
- How much volume does one pound of gold occupy? How much volume do 40,000,000 Cheez-Its occupy?
- How long could you survive on 40,000,000 Cheez-Its?
- Is there value in asking silly questions like this one?
Cost
At the time of writing, the price of gold is $1800 per troy ounce, or $26,244/lb. Gold is easy to sell—thus, you could just pocket a nice $26,000.[1]
Calculating the cost of purchasing 40,000,000 Cheez-Its is harder. After some searching, I found this deal on Walmart which sells Cheez-Its in bulk for 25 cents/oz. A quick glance at the Nutrition Facts reveals that each container contains ~540 Cheez-Its. The carton costs $5.28, so 40,000,000 Cheez-Its would set me back ~$390,100. That's enough to buy a nice house.[2]
Thus it costs far more to buy 40,000,000 Cheez-Its than it does to buy a pound of gold. But are you really going to use or eat 40,000,000 Cheez-Its before their shelf life of 11 months makes them inedible? Maybe you could find a buyer if you looked hard enough...
Volume
Pure gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3, so 1 pound of pure gold takes up ~1.43 cubic inches—slightly less than the volume of a regular-sized marshmallow.
I wish I could find the density of a Cheez-It online. I couldn't, so I drove to my nearest H.E.B. and purchased a carton of Cheez-Its. I picked out 50 unbroken Cheez-Its and placed them in a measuring cup.
I shook the measuring cup a couple times and took measurements. The 50 Cheez-Its occupy approximately 225mL. More calculations reveal 40,000,000 Cheez-Its would occupy ~180 m3, or the space inside 16 cement mixer trucks.
Alternatively, you could fill up a full-size hockey rink with a 4-inch layer of Cheez-Its[3], which would make a lot of hockey players very mad. But if you need a place to store 40,000,000 Cheez-Its, you could get a high-vis vest and try to find your way into a local hockey rink...
Survival Time
You’re on a remote-controlled cargo plane, which is carrying 40,000,000 Cheez-Its across the Atlantic Ocean. Oh no! The plane crashes.[4] You're stranded on a desert island with 40,000,000 Cheez-Its (and an adequate supply of water). How long could you survive?
If you simply count calories and assume a caloric intake of 2000 cal/day, you could theoretically survive for 304 years. There happens to be a couple of problems with that figure, though. Cheez-Its are not very nutritious and they become inedible in probably 3-4 years.
The ideal situation here is for the cargo plane to carry 40,000,000 Cheez-Its and 303 of your best friends. Then you can all have a great retreat on the island for 1 year before finding your way back to civilization.
The Value of Stupid Questions
When I first thought of the original question (same as the article title), I was having Christmas Eve lunch with some of my younger friends and their families. And while the food was delicious, the conversation was stagnant.
As the host family, I felt the urge to break the ice a little. I decided to ask the stupid question I had come up with. But that's all it took.
Everyone at the table gave their opinion on my original question (most chose the gold). Then we started coming up with more questions:
- Would you rather spend five years on Mars or ten years in destitute poverty? (Survival is guaranteed in both cases.)
- Would you rather have two of your dominant hand (so two right hands for most people) or have two normal hands (so nothing changes)?
- Would you rather be the richest person alive 200 years ago or live below the poverty line 100 years in the future?
Despite their general silliness, there's considerable merit to these questions. You can ask anyone these questions, and you're almost guaranteed to get an interesting answer and justification. And unlike most normal questions we encounter on a daily basis, these questions are purely for fun. They're not serious at all.
I challenge you to come up with your own stupid questions. If you want to break the ice at a party or simply learn more about someone, just ask them! Also, I hope you've made a very important decision on whether you want one pound of solid gold or 40,000,000 Cheez-Its.
As I rewrite this article into Markdown in April 2025, the price of gold is ~$3000 per troy ounce. Holy smokes I should have invested in gold. ↩︎
Maybe not in today's economy... ↩︎
The total area of an international ice hockey rink is 1,765 m3. ↩︎
Probably because your plane was trying to carry 44 metric tonnes of Cheez-Its. ↩︎