10 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] thread
Sadly, this is just a rumor.
It is not a rumor, it is Satire.
I'll admit that my understanding of all literary forms isn't very complete, but this doesn't appear to be satire either. Satire is all about pointing out flaws and exploiting them for humor. This is just a not-true story that would be funny if it had happened, which doesn't even make it a rumor.
It's not even a rumor. It's a hoax.
(comment deleted)
20B metal coins wil cost order of magnitude more than $1B.
Humor aside, I can't even imagine the shipping costs for pulling a stunt like this in reality. Then again, no one ever said spite was cheap!
Their math is off.

$1bn is 20bn nickels. With a diameter of 21.21mm and height of 1.95mm, that's an area of about 689mm, assuming 800 for a lack of packing efficiency. 800 * 20,000,000,000 = 16 trillion mm^3, or 16,000 m^3. A high end dump truck can carry ~20 yards of material, which is about 15.3 m^3. That means you'd require (16,000 m^3/15.3 m^3 per truck) = ~1,046 trucks.

1,046 trucks. Fact check your satire, bro.

(Alternatively, using the "more than 30" figure of say, 35, each truck would be carrying 457 m^3 of nickels, or about 571.5 million nickels, which would weigh 3150 short tons per truck.)

Fun morning exercise, at least.