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Comment by radicality | Hacker News Reader

Semi related - a few months ago, while not fully sober, I was aimlessly browsing through Amazon and ended up owning a set of two 1.5inch cubes - one aluminium, one tungsten.

It’s kind of a silly purchase considering it’s a lot of money for 2 metal cubes, but it’s honestly very impressive just how heavy that small cube is - both objectively, and when compared to the aluminium cube. Also makes for a great talking point when having guests over.

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When I heard that the crypto millionaires were buying Tungsten cubes for fun, I checked into the prices. Amazon lists a 1.5" cube (weighs 1 kg) at $199 and a 4" cube (that weighs 18.9 kg [0]) at $3499. There's no way I'm spending that, but I will admit to wanting to experience their density for myself.

[0] free Prime shipping for the win

Tungsten doesn't seem especially heavy; it's a little less than gold.

right, just buy 1kg of gold instead

It's not the heaviest thing in the world, but it's probably the heaviest thing a person could buy a practical cube of. The main metals heavier than lead are gold, iridium, mercury, platinum, tungsten, and uranium.

Uranium is a comparable price and density to tungsten, but buying iridium is gonna be at least 50x the price for something 10% denser.

Uranium at it's elemental density is a comparable price to tungsten??

Yeah, it's part of what makes it so fantastic as armor piercing ammunition. And tank armor.

6 hours later, I'm an idiot who read density instead of price.

Funny thing is, while Depleted Uranium is about the same density as tungsten, it's also a fair bit cheaper (for major nuclear governments) because it's an otherwise nearly useless byproduct of the uranium enrichment process, and there's around a million tons of it sitting in storage worldwide.

And much heavier than lead.

How often do you have 2" cubes of gold lying around?

Also, if your house burns down your tungsten cube will still be intact, so you don't have to insure it.

Tungsten is 19.25, gold is 19.3, and osmium is 22.59 g/cm^3. Tungsten isn't quite the densest material around, but it's in the general ballpark.

Also, since the density of tungsten and gold are so close I guess tungsten gets ordered a lot by people intending to forge the counterfeit gold bars...

I wish I was a millionaire. I could fulfil my wish of owning replica of IPK that is small cylinder of Platinum-Iridium weighting very very close to kilogram.

IPK?

International Prototype Kilogram, the mass which used to be the reference standard for the kilogram until it was redefined to be based on fundamental constants a few years ago.

Before the standard was changed, I spent a while trying to get one of the prototype silicon sphere kilograms-- slightly misshapen would have been fine-- without success.

I looked it up because I hadn't heard of the crypto bro thing. OMG. You can apparently get them from tungsten.com for only $2999 according to GQ.

https://www.gq.com/story/tungesten-cubes-what-is-going-on

If one can wait for shipping, I recommend ordering (directly?) from Alibaba.

I was able to buy a 2" tungsten cube from Alibaba for $312 after shipping. It was cheaper than any (re)sellers I found on Amazon/eBay/webstores. It came out to 137% more tungsten for only 56% more cost. $39.00 per cubic inch versus $59.26 per cubic inch.

Having it next to an aluminum cube of the same size is fun.

I have a part off an aircraft (nobody seems to know what part or what aircraft). I imagine it's partially tungsten since it's not much bigger than a 4x4 cube and has to weigh close to 50lbs.

Err, that could be depleted uranium.

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0321/ML032180089.pdf

It's not shaped like a prism. It has some functionality to it (there are mounting points and a pivot of some sort). Also, I think it came from a military aircraft, so not a 747.

I’d love to see some pictures of you have them handy.

Tracking down obscure stuff like this is soothing :)

I'll have to get some pictures next time I'm at my parents'.

You can get large pieces of tungsten (well, tungsten alloys since pure tungsten isn't very machinable it isn't that widely used) pretty cheaply by contacting a machine shop directly.

People putting listings on amazon are exploiting what a particular market will pay.

I bought one of those cubes off Amazon and use it as a paper weight. Was like $200 or something. It’s an excellent value for its quality as a conversation starter.

I do a little TIG welding. The electrodes are made of mostly tungsten. (Tungsten is used for its high melting point. Lanthanum or some other elements are often added to raise the melting point somewhat.)

The electrodes aren't very big, but the density is definitely weird.

Related thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28318754 ("My Tungsten Cube", 330 comments)

It literally cures mortality. https://youtu.be/C7EocA1hsCU

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