Talk:Golden Buddha (statue)

Note on translation
I included no references because all I did was a translation from the articles of Spanish and French Wikipedia, which haven't references either. Hopefully someone corrects that.

I hesitated putting the article as Golden Buddha, like in the ES and FR versions, or like Wat Traimit, the name of the temple where the statue is. I ended up putting a redirect in Wat Traimit. --Stegop (talk) 01:50, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I think there should be a separate entry for Wat Traimit, esp. since a wonderful new temple was built a few years ago to house the Golden Buddha. Before, the Buddha was housed in a nondescript temple, now it's in a new breathtaking temple which deserves more attention (and some photos). Philiproeland (talk) 07:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)Philiproeland

Solid Gold?
3m high, the statue if solid would be roughly a cubic meter, or 1 million cubic centimeters. 19 grams of gold per cubic centimeter, so we're talking maybe 19 million grams of gold. That comes to 20 tons.

The mass of the statue @ 5.5 tons seems more in line with the density of copper (8.9 g/cc). Up close you can see a lot of copper showing through, and the statue looks more like brass than gold. Especially in the back of the statue, there are seams and welds, articles always talk about this statue as if it were a solid piece cast of gold, and it is clearly not constructed like this, furthermore the surface is rippled, and not smooth as one would expect a large cast piece to be. It is most likely not even solid copper, but is plates of copper that were joined and/or welded and then gilded. It is still a nice statue but it is clearly not a solid gold artifact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.140.191.76 (talk) 01:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Hahaha, oh my. I'm not exactly sure why you think this ridiculous copper lie changes the fact it is actually made of solid gold. 124.169.89.86 (talk) 10:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC) Sutter Cane
 * Perhaps it's because 5.5T of solid gold is currently worth £150Million GBP / $240Million USD? If it is verifiably solid gold then example values should be noted. 92.16.238.44 (talk) 12:42, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Density and Volume
The math. 5,500 kg = 5.5 million grams. 19.3 grams per cc (gold density) = 284,000 cc for 5.5 tons of gold. One cubic meter is 100x100x100 centimers, or 1,000,000 CC. Thus, 5.5 tons of gold comes out to just under a third of a cubic meter of solid gold. If you want to imagine what a third of a cubic meter looks like, glance at a door, and find the square using the handle and the bottom opposite corner as the two corners. Then move your hand out about a foot. That's a third of a cubic meter. Gold is dense. This statue at 3 meters high, is clearly made from more material than this (if solid). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.173.89.145 (talk) 20:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, the statue is not a block of 1m x 1m x 3m ; and the base could well be 1m x 1m, if it is roughly shaped as a cone then this accounts for a factor of 1/3 in volume & mass.
 * OTOH, I can't understand how people did not recognize, when they transported the "cement" statue, that it was much too heavy - cement has less than the 10th of the specific weight of gold. &mdash; MFH:Talk 22:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

How tall?
There's apparently a disagreement about the height of the statue. Somebody removed this relevant information, and I placed it back. Please don't remove this information until the matter is clarified further. Can someone help to clarify this issue? Y-barton (talk) 04:32, 5 July 2013 (UTC)