I was curious about the medals, compositions, and materials costs so here's what I found.
The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 19.30 g/cm^3 and silver 10.49 g/cm^3. I'm not keeping track of sig figs because I don't care enough for a quick rundown.
For the gold medal, its composition is listed as minimum 92.5% silver with 6g of gold mixed in. I didn't see what the percentage specified (mass, volume) so I'll assume volume for silver henceforth. 7.845 cm^3 is 92.5% of min volume of a medal. This works out to 82.294 g of silver (7.845 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3). Using market prices above, silver value: $67.48, gold value: $351.36, total materials value: $418.84.
Now, if the gold medal were solid gold, you'd have 163.703 g (8.482 cm^3 * 19.3 g/cm^3) of gold. Materials market value of the medal would be $9,586.
For the silver medal, it's 92.5 silver with nothing specified mixed in. So the identical silver component from the gold medal which means its total materials value is $67.48.
If the silver medal was pure silver, we'd have 88.976 g (8.482 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3) and the materials value would be $72.96.
The bronze is 97% copper, 0.5% tin, and 2.5% zinc. I won't do this because I'm not interested, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Now the fun part, rough estimate of total material cost of existing gold and silver medal compositions for all 339 events: $164,862.48 (339 * ($418.84 + $67.48)).
Rough material cost if the gold medals were actually gold and the silver were actually silver: $3.274 million (339*($9,586 + $72.96). It would cost about 20x the current material costs to give the athletes more representitive and valuable medals. The total cost of this would be an additional ~$3.1 million to the host or whoever pays for it.
Very good point. I don't really watch sports and 339 was the best representitive number I could find for total medals awarded. I imagine if you knew how many medals were team based, the fixed sizes of teams that get medals, and so on you could work this out more accurately then.
From wikipedia: 'Some combat sports (such as boxing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling) award two bronze medals per competition, resulting in, overall, more bronze medals being awarded than the other colours."
The occasional tie could also push it the other way— an additional gold at the expense of a silver or likewise with two silvers instead of a silver + bronze.
The Tokyo medals are around 500g each, so while those are nice estimates for the minimum dimensions, if the Tokyo golds were of the same weight and heft they have been made (and also 100% base metal) then you’d be looking at around $15m USD just for the golds
Cool fast math! Seems like the cost to give out actual gold is super tiny compared to the amount the olympic committee charges for the games. They should give out solid gold or at least 18k to make it last longer with fewer scratches.
The dimensions of the medals are specified as a minimum of 60mm diameter by 3mm thick. For a cylinder, that's 8.482 cm^3 volume per medal, minimum. The 2020 Olympics has 339 events, each with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. Market price I found for gold as of this post is $58.56/g and silver is $0.82/g. Gold has a density of 19.30 g/cm^3 and silver 10.49 g/cm^3. I'm not keeping track of sig figs because I don't care enough for a quick rundown.
For the gold medal, its composition is listed as minimum 92.5% silver with 6g of gold mixed in. I didn't see what the percentage specified (mass, volume) so I'll assume volume for silver henceforth. 7.845 cm^3 is 92.5% of min volume of a medal. This works out to 82.294 g of silver (7.845 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3). Using market prices above, silver value: $67.48, gold value: $351.36, total materials value: $418.84.
Now, if the gold medal were solid gold, you'd have 163.703 g (8.482 cm^3 * 19.3 g/cm^3) of gold. Materials market value of the medal would be $9,586.
For the silver medal, it's 92.5 silver with nothing specified mixed in. So the identical silver component from the gold medal which means its total materials value is $67.48.
If the silver medal was pure silver, we'd have 88.976 g (8.482 cm^3 * 10.49 g/cm^3) and the materials value would be $72.96.
The bronze is 97% copper, 0.5% tin, and 2.5% zinc. I won't do this because I'm not interested, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Now the fun part, rough estimate of total material cost of existing gold and silver medal compositions for all 339 events: $164,862.48 (339 * ($418.84 + $67.48)).
Rough material cost if the gold medals were actually gold and the silver were actually silver: $3.274 million (339*($9,586 + $72.96). It would cost about 20x the current material costs to give the athletes more representitive and valuable medals. The total cost of this would be an additional ~$3.1 million to the host or whoever pays for it.