You may have heard that Apple has about $110 billion in cash reserves just sitting around. You may also have heard that, if converted to dollar bills, this money could fill about 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools. You may be hankering for some more hastily-calculated, hilariously meta statistics about what else Apple could do with $110 billion and Olympic-sized swimming pools. You want statistics about money and swimming pools? We’ve got your statistics about money and swimming pools.
With its $110 billion in cash reserves, Apple could:
- Actually construct about 220,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools to put stuff in[1]
- Fill about 1,950 Olympic-sized swimming pools with pennies[2]
- Fill about 11 and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools with caviar[3]
- Fill about 1,096 Olympic-sized swimming pools with actual McIntosh apples[4]
- Fill about 2,501 Olympic-sized swimming pools with these Scrooge McDuck Plushes[5]
- Fill about zero Olympic-size swimming pools with Steve Jobs dolls, because no one is allowed to make them
And here is your “Apple’s cash reserves and Olympic-sized swimming pool word problem that none of us could figure out” word problem of the day:
What is the least number of swimming pools Apple could build so that the remaining cash (in dollar bills) fits into them?
- Assuming Olympic-sized swimming pools cost about $500,000
- and 2,190,177,157 dollar bills will fit in an Olympic-sized swimming pool
The furthest we could get on this is that this probably involves a quadratic equation, but none of us have taken a math class in years. Anyone who can figure this out will be awarded approximately 3 well-earned propers, one from each of us.
Annotations!
1. Assuming an Olympic-sized pool costs about$500,000 to construct.
2. Given a penny is .02696 cubic inches, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool is 152,064,000 cubic inches
3. Assuming the caviar in question is $100 an ounce, each ounce coming out to 1.598813 cubic inches
4. Assuming the apples cost roughly $2 a pound, come roughly three to a pound, and are roughly the size of a tennis ball
5. Assuming each plush has the volume of a 10 inch tall cylinder with a 1.625 inch radius (when compact)
(image credit Shutterstock)
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Published: Apr 25, 2012 02:50 pm