In touring the Dahlonega Gold Museum, they told us that during the Dahlonega Gold Rush (the first major gold rush in the U.S.) three million ounces of gold were mined. But how much is that, really? First, let's get it to kilograms to work with it more. Precious metals are almost measured in Troy ounces, so if we go to Google.com and type in "3,000,000 troy ounces in kilograms" it tells us "93,310.4304 kilograms." (or the hard way, 32.150747 troy ounces per kilogram) We take another unit conversion turn and find it's about 102 short (English) tons. Ok, about 100 tons of gold makes a Gold Rush, but how large a cube would that be?

According to the Internet, the density of gold is 19.32 grams per cubic centimeter, so:

Dropping down to grams: 93,310,430.4 grams x 1 cm3 / 19.32 grams = 4829732.9 cubic centimeters. How long on a side is that? We take the cube root and get 169 centimeters, or 1.69 meters, or about 5 feet, 6 1/2 inches. So all the gold taken from the Dahlonega Gold Rush would form a cube about 5 1/2 feet on a side, that weighs 100 tons.

If you're interested, more information about Gold Rushes. Enjoy!