The shiniest spot on the Statue of Liberty is the flame on her torch. It’s copper coated in a thin layer of gold – but how much? The torch is the same height as the Statue’s pointy finger, which is 8 feet! But 1 ounce of gold, which is 1/2 the weight of a candy bar but only the size of a quarter, can e pounded so thin that it can 100 square feet — about the size of your bedroom floor! Turns out the torch is covered in 5,000 little 3-inch squares that weigh less than 6 ounces total!
Wee ones: Who’s taller, you or that 8-foot-tall flame? Find out your height in feet!
Little kids: If you can make 2 gold earrings from each ounce of gold, how many earrings can you make from 2 ounces? Bonus: If half of the 6 ounces of gold on the torch peeled off, how much would be left on there?
Big kids: The “surface area” around a ball is always 4 times pi (3.14) times the radius times the radius again, where the radius is 1/2 the distance across. What’s the surface area of the Statue’s 8-foot flame? (You can round pi to 3.) Bonus: If you peeled off one of those 5,000 sheets of gold for yourself, how many would be left?
Answers:
Wee ones: The flame is taller…almost no people are 8 feet tall!
Little kids: 4 earrings. Bonus: 3 ounces.
Big kids: About 192 square feet, without the fingers of flames. Bonus: 4,999 sheets.
