First, that might just mean that you live at a higher altitude than your father, but I guess you meant mass. Then, it might just mean that your father's calcul

First, that might just mean that you live at a higher altitude than your father, but I guess you meant mass. Then, it might just mean that your father's calculator use material of higher density. More seriously. when building something, there's a lot more material than what comes in the final product: - the scrap generated by the by the manufacturing process. The more elements, the more it's going to be. - the number of defects, for every parts of the device (for some parts it will be extremely low, for some it would be quite higher, but there's always some). Granted, some defects can be re-purposed, but it's not always the case - The raw materials to actually manufacture (like water) - The average number of repairs required over a lifetime (replacing the screen on a iphone is quite frequent) - The materials required to build the supply chain that can build such devices. - The materials required to generate the energy required to build the factories. And there's plenty of other things to take into account. In the end it's not about the volume of raw material as such, that doesn't mean much as it is. It's for each material, to take into consideration if it's renewable, what's the impact of extracting it and many other questions.