7 ms·

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a disp

> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possible the exhibit designer simply decided a bigger cube which filled the floor to ceiling space would be a better visual. Which would be unfortunate because, personally, the exhibit concept I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" not "Here's $1M in bills." The first concept is mildly interesting while the second is just a stunt. Regardless of the reason it's off, I think it's most likely there's only $1M of bills in the cube. The folks responsible for collecting and destroying used bills tend to be exacting in their auditing for obvious reasons. So when the exhibit designers got $1M in used bills approved and released, that's exactly how much they got. It also stands to reason that they'd design the cube a little bigger than their calculated area requirement to ensure at least $1M would fit (along with some method of padding the interior) - although >50% seems excessive for a variability margin, so I still think it was an aesthetic choice or calculation error. Of course, one could do a practical replication to verify the area required with $10,000 in $1 bills. Regardless, it's an interesting observation and a cool counting program to help verify.

Nextgrid 1y ago
I think it's very unlikely there's real money in it. Most likely it's "real-ish" bills taken early from the production line without any of the security features, if not outright prop money - it's not like someone can inspect the printing or security features through the glass anyway. There's little upside in using real money, and plenty of downside. Let's say the cube gets damaged and needs to go for a repair or rebuild - real money would require emptying it under supervision and counting the bills, where as fake money can just be sent as-is to the contractor, and any visible shortfall can be made up with more fake money upon return if needed).
- __float 1y ago
  Those downsides don't seem that bad to me. If something needed repair, they can bring a contractor on site, and certainly the Fed has cameras and police to monitor. (In line with some other commenters, I'm more inclined to believe it's bills they've taken out of circulation than "almost finished" ones -- security features are built in throughout the process, not just an extra step at the end.)
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    Cameras still need to be monitored which costs money. Plus sleight-of-hand and other tricks are a thing, so you'd probably still need to background-check any contractors and maintain a strict chain of custody over access to the cube and then recount and re-check to make sure none of the currency has been substituted by lookalike fakes. Police still costs money. If there is no reasonable way for the public to notice, why not make everyone's life easier by using fake money? That would be easier and cheaper. Leaks can be dealt with by the legal system (pay people decently and make them sign an NDA in exchange not to disclose the bills are fake) which is much easier than actually keeping track of 1M of currency.
beezle 1y ago
I'm not sure where the original guy got the idea that the bills are uniform in the interior. Seems just as likely that the visible faces of the cube are "display" with an interior backing cube (say out of thin plywood) inside which the balance of the funds are dumped, either in pretty stacks or just how they land.
johnfn 1y ago
I think this is the most reasonable answer on the thread. As amusing as it is to see everyone come up with zany solutions, it is most likely something boring like this.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
What’s the point of disseminating the technical reasoning behind it? I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.
- colejohnson66 1y ago
  They handle money by putting them in cubes of glass? Non-snark: Because it's fun to theorize.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    agreeed
- whatevertrevor 1y ago
  Because we still care about assigning sensible priors to whatever we think is the truth? You can use this to "analogize" how the feds handle money, but if they were actually careful with the money but a bit misleading on the space $1m would take, that's a different and less egregious error. Ignoring the space of potential possible explanations to make your analogy stronger is just confirmation bias with additional steps.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    I'm half serious. Yeah I see the point. But more important to me is the analogy.
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      I see. That is fair, no judgement. Though I do sometimes feel the pervasive casual cynicism we have everywhere today sort of creates a self-reinforcing cycle as it preemptively erodes trust.
      - ninetyninenine 1y ago
quantadev 1y ago
Yeah, there's no way they piled the cash into a square on the floor and then measured it and then had the box made based on the measurements. They had the box made FIRST based on rough calculations, being sure to over-estimate it's size on purpose, knowing they can fill the interior with cardboard boxes as needed to space things out.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- a2800276 1y ago
  Considering they handle and transport a lot of money, it's safe to assume they don't meet to make back of the envelope estimations concerning weight and volume.
  - quantadev 1y ago
    Yeah by "rough calculation" what I mean is that since the Fed knows the ratio of volume to bills, they might have intentionally made the box too big.
gpm 1y ago
> The folks responsible for collecting and destroying used bills tend to be exacting in their auditing for obvious reasons. So when the exhibit designers got $1M in used bills approved and released, that's exactly how much they got. But who says that they didn't actually request $1.5M in used bills after doing the math of what it would take to make a cube. Or fill it up with $1M in used bills, and come back and make another request for $500k that also got approved...
- mrandish 1y ago
  Because going >50% over-budget isn't a good way to further anyone's career in exhibit design, engineering and construction. I have a friend who works at a firm which specializes in engineering and constructing exhibits for museums and all kinds of public spaces. There's a whole industry ecosystem around doing this. They get brought in on contracts by design firms which specialize in permanent installation exhibits who get hired by the person responsible for exhibits at a museum or exhibit space. It's no different than most niche specialty industries. Even though it's comparatively small, there are still thousands of sites and hundreds of firms. People who do this specialize in it, develop long-term careers and have resumes they care about. Jobs for firms and people come by reputation and word of mouth. Delivering on time, on spec and on budget is crucial for survival. The facilities manager for this Fed building hired an exhibit space manager who developed a budget for this public tour project and then put it out to exhibit design firms for bids. The project was approved on a fixed budget and time frame. The overall budget the exhibit space manager submitted to the facilities manager certainly included the cost of the cash in the cube. But the bigger reason no one was cavalier about just filling it up with $100 bills is that this exhibit is different because the exhibited artifact is of uniquely high-value (and unlike a Rembrandt, immediately spendable), so it probably had to have a security assessment and is very likely insured against loss (not just theft but fire/water damage etc). The cost of insuring and securing the exhibit was calculated before the budget was ever approved. Adding another 50% in cash would increase the insurance premium.
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    It is the Fed though, does money actually "cost" anything for them? They're the ones who make the money!
ggreer 1y ago
It could be that they measured a stack of bills sitting on a table, then did the math to make a metal frame to contain $1,000,000. But they didn't account for stacks compressing under the weight of higher stacks, and it wouldn't look as nice if the top part of the cube was empty. Still, it does seem like it would be cheaper to rebuild the case than to add $500k to it. Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash as long as it's guaranteed not to be spent.
- grogenaut 1y ago
  It's the cost of paper not the dollar value. Also only the outermost bills need be real the rest could just be paper, or voided bills or whatever. But accounting can cover it. It's not gold or pennies where the currency costs what it is worth to make
  - kasey_junk 1y ago
    Coins don’t cost what they are worth to make.
    - tempestn 1y ago
      Pennies do. (More, actually.)
    - bandofthehawk 1y ago
      Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth.
      - jameshart 1y ago
        People are quick to state this as if it's a slam dunk case for 'we shouldn't make them any more', but I don't understand the thinking there. An individual coin can be used many many times to facilitate many many transactions before it eventually falls out of circulation through loss or damage. The amount you should spend on making coins of a given denomination has nothing to do with what the total face value of those coins is, but needs to be traded off against the value to the economy of having those coins in circulation. If spending more money on producing higher quality coins enables them to remain in circulation twice as long, it might be worthwhile even if the cost exceeds the face value. It's a different story if the material value of the metal in the coin exceeds its face value - at that point it makes sense to go to a bank, change money into pennies, then scrap them and sell the copper. That would be bad. But the reason pennies are a bad deal isn't because of their manufacturing cost, it's because their handling costs exceed the value of incorporating them in a transaction. Should a store go to the trouble of keeping pennies available, counting them, storing them, transferring them to the bank? Or should they round up change to the nearest five cents and take a 4c hit on each transaction where you'd have been able to use pennies? If your average transaction value is over a hundred dollars or so, like most supermarkets, and you only handle cash on one sale in 50 say, if handling pennies in your cash-management operation takes more than a few thousandths of one percent of your budget, it's costing you too much.
daemonologist 1y ago
The compression of the bills under their own weight might account for the excessive margin - a lone $100 bundle, even compressed by hand before measuring, probably takes up more vertical space than the ones in the cube.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hidelooktropic 1y ago
  But a bundle is a bundle
deepsun 1y ago
I think those bills didn't go through decommissioning process for used bills. It's much easier to just keep $1M on passive cash balance forever. Yes, they lose about $5k/month on lost interest rate, but a bank can afford it.
- hgomersall 1y ago
  These are bank notes so they are a liability of the fed. Them holding them doesn't mean they have more money, they just have less liability.
  - deepsun 1y ago
    Yep. Imagine if they put those banknotes through decommissioning, but didn't actually destroy them. Some day they would put it out (or get it stolen), and now there's unaccounted (counterfeit?) cash in circulation. Better to keep it real.
- necovek 1y ago
  $5k/month or $60k/year is roughly 6% of annual conformal interest rate — is there any bank that will provide that much return in USA today? (There are investment funds which usually do, but there are no guarantees there)
  - deepsun 1y ago
    I used AFR [1] that are from 4% to 5%. One cannot give loans lower than that. Any mortgage is higher than that. [1] https://www.irs.gov/applicable-federal-rates https://www.irs.gov/applicable-federal-rates
tmnvix 1y ago
> I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" Here's $1,000,000 in $50 notes at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Museum: https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/2817090_qnRbbX_qbwjnL_Owhm522NbMiE7dxeuXqCUT7oVE_iE.jpg https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/2817090_qnRbbX_q...
- throwaway422432 1y ago
  Reminds me of getting a 20c coin in change with a Kiwi* on the back. My younger self always felt like I had been shortchanged 5c. * AUD 20c was an identical size and same embossed image of the Queen, but a platypus on the reverse.
Retric 1y ago
Rather than counting error it’s likely the ~1 ton weight of stacking bills like this would deform the lower sections and possibly stress the glass depending on thickness. So rather than random filler there may be internal structural bracing so the outside of the cube looks nice and neat. Simplest way to double check is if top and bottom corners have the same bill density.
- trhway 1y ago
  may be they started with a $1M and with time the bills weight compresses the bills, and they have periodically to add more to fill the newly forming emptiness. Kind of inflation.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
moralestapia 1y ago
Museum: "Don't worry, no one will notice". Calvin Liang: "Ackshually ..."
rob_c 1y ago
It's probably hollow to make the display easier and more reliable.
- eschneider 1y ago
  It is hollow. But it wasn't originally. cough
NoSalt 1y ago
> "How do I know that's not a bunch of ones with a twenty wrapped around it?" ~ Vincent LaGuardia Gambini
- tmtvl 1y ago
  What's a yout?
wl 1y ago
> personally, the exhibit concept I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" not "Here's $1M in bills." The first concept is mildly interesting while the second is just a stunt. They have that maybe 50 feet away. It fits in a briefcase. Also, $1 million in $20s.
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
...I actually think you're being too nice. The exhibit implies that this is how big a cube of a million dollars would be. You can use it to get a sense of how much a million is. If it's 50% too big, that's a serious mistake! They should, like, take down the exhibit until it's fixed. You can't just make one of the bars on a graph taller because it looks more impressive, or your pen slipped, or whatever else. This thing is inaccurate and they should fix it.
RyanOD 1y ago
Or, the cube was surplus?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jaisio 1y ago
Fun fact: "area" denotes 2D. The 3D term is "volume".

Nextgrid 1y ago

I think it's very unlikely there's real money in it. Most likely it's "real-ish" bills taken early from the production line without any of the security features, if not outright prop money - it's not like someone can inspect the printing or security features through the glass anyway. There's little upside in using real money, and plenty of downside. Let's say the cube gets damaged and needs to go for a repair or rebuild - real money would require emptying it under supervision and counting the bills, where as fake money can just be sent as-is to the contractor, and any visible shortfall can be made up with more fake money upon return if needed).

__float 1y ago
Those downsides don't seem that bad to me. If something needed repair, they can bring a contractor on site, and certainly the Fed has cameras and police to monitor. (In line with some other commenters, I'm more inclined to believe it's bills they've taken out of circulation than "almost finished" ones -- security features are built in throughout the process, not just an extra step at the end.)
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  Cameras still need to be monitored which costs money. Plus sleight-of-hand and other tricks are a thing, so you'd probably still need to background-check any contractors and maintain a strict chain of custody over access to the cube and then recount and re-check to make sure none of the currency has been substituted by lookalike fakes. Police still costs money. If there is no reasonable way for the public to notice, why not make everyone's life easier by using fake money? That would be easier and cheaper. Leaks can be dealt with by the legal system (pay people decently and make them sign an NDA in exchange not to disclose the bills are fake) which is much easier than actually keeping track of 1M of currency.

beezle 1y ago

I'm not sure where the original guy got the idea that the bills are uniform in the interior. Seems just as likely that the visible faces of the cube are "display" with an interior backing cube (say out of thin plywood) inside which the balance of the funds are dumped, either in pretty stacks or just how they land.

johnfn 1y ago

I think this is the most reasonable answer on the thread. As amusing as it is to see everyone come up with zany solutions, it is most likely something boring like this.

ninetyninenine 1y ago

What’s the point of disseminating the technical reasoning behind it? I think it’s better served to use this as an analogy of how the federal government handles money.

colejohnson66 1y ago
They handle money by putting them in cubes of glass? Non-snark: Because it's fun to theorize.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  agreeed
whatevertrevor 1y ago
Because we still care about assigning sensible priors to whatever we think is the truth? You can use this to "analogize" how the feds handle money, but if they were actually careful with the money but a bit misleading on the space $1m would take, that's a different and less egregious error. Ignoring the space of potential possible explanations to make your analogy stronger is just confirmation bias with additional steps.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  I'm half serious. Yeah I see the point. But more important to me is the analogy.
  - whatevertrevor 1y ago
    I see. That is fair, no judgement. Though I do sometimes feel the pervasive casual cynicism we have everywhere today sort of creates a self-reinforcing cycle as it preemptively erodes trust.
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago

quantadev 1y ago

Yeah, there's no way they piled the cash into a square on the floor and then measured it and then had the box made based on the measurements. They had the box made FIRST based on rough calculations, being sure to over-estimate it's size on purpose, knowing they can fill the interior with cardboard boxes as needed to space things out.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
a2800276 1y ago
Considering they handle and transport a lot of money, it's safe to assume they don't meet to make back of the envelope estimations concerning weight and volume.
- quantadev 1y ago
  Yeah by "rough calculation" what I mean is that since the Fed knows the ratio of volume to bills, they might have intentionally made the box too big.

gpm 1y ago

> The folks responsible for collecting and destroying used bills tend to be exacting in their auditing for obvious reasons. So when the exhibit designers got $1M in used bills approved and released, that's exactly how much they got. But who says that they didn't actually request $1.5M in used bills after doing the math of what it would take to make a cube. Or fill it up with $1M in used bills, and come back and make another request for $500k that also got approved...

mrandish 1y ago
Because going >50% over-budget isn't a good way to further anyone's career in exhibit design, engineering and construction. I have a friend who works at a firm which specializes in engineering and constructing exhibits for museums and all kinds of public spaces. There's a whole industry ecosystem around doing this. They get brought in on contracts by design firms which specialize in permanent installation exhibits who get hired by the person responsible for exhibits at a museum or exhibit space. It's no different than most niche specialty industries. Even though it's comparatively small, there are still thousands of sites and hundreds of firms. People who do this specialize in it, develop long-term careers and have resumes they care about. Jobs for firms and people come by reputation and word of mouth. Delivering on time, on spec and on budget is crucial for survival. The facilities manager for this Fed building hired an exhibit space manager who developed a budget for this public tour project and then put it out to exhibit design firms for bids. The project was approved on a fixed budget and time frame. The overall budget the exhibit space manager submitted to the facilities manager certainly included the cost of the cash in the cube. But the bigger reason no one was cavalier about just filling it up with $100 bills is that this exhibit is different because the exhibited artifact is of uniquely high-value (and unlike a Rembrandt, immediately spendable), so it probably had to have a security assessment and is very likely insured against loss (not just theft but fire/water damage etc). The cost of insuring and securing the exhibit was calculated before the budget was ever approved. Adding another 50% in cash would increase the insurance premium.
- roywiggins 1y ago
  It is the Fed though, does money actually "cost" anything for them? They're the ones who make the money!

ggreer 1y ago

It could be that they measured a stack of bills sitting on a table, then did the math to make a metal frame to contain $1,000,000. But they didn't account for stacks compressing under the weight of higher stacks, and it wouldn't look as nice if the top part of the cube was empty. Still, it does seem like it would be cheaper to rebuild the case than to add $500k to it. Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash as long as it's guaranteed not to be spent.

grogenaut 1y ago
It's the cost of paper not the dollar value. Also only the outermost bills need be real the rest could just be paper, or voided bills or whatever. But accounting can cover it. It's not gold or pennies where the currency costs what it is worth to make
- kasey_junk 1y ago
  Coins don’t cost what they are worth to make.
  - tempestn 1y ago
    Pennies do. (More, actually.)
  - bandofthehawk 1y ago
    Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth.
    - jameshart 1y ago
      People are quick to state this as if it's a slam dunk case for 'we shouldn't make them any more', but I don't understand the thinking there. An individual coin can be used many many times to facilitate many many transactions before it eventually falls out of circulation through loss or damage. The amount you should spend on making coins of a given denomination has nothing to do with what the total face value of those coins is, but needs to be traded off against the value to the economy of having those coins in circulation. If spending more money on producing higher quality coins enables them to remain in circulation twice as long, it might be worthwhile even if the cost exceeds the face value. It's a different story if the material value of the metal in the coin exceeds its face value - at that point it makes sense to go to a bank, change money into pennies, then scrap them and sell the copper. That would be bad. But the reason pennies are a bad deal isn't because of their manufacturing cost, it's because their handling costs exceed the value of incorporating them in a transaction. Should a store go to the trouble of keeping pennies available, counting them, storing them, transferring them to the bank? Or should they round up change to the nearest five cents and take a 4c hit on each transaction where you'd have been able to use pennies? If your average transaction value is over a hundred dollars or so, like most supermarkets, and you only handle cash on one sale in 50 say, if handling pennies in your cash-management operation takes more than a few thousandths of one percent of your budget, it's costing you too much.

daemonologist 1y ago

The compression of the bills under their own weight might account for the excessive margin - a lone $100 bundle, even compressed by hand before measuring, probably takes up more vertical space than the ones in the cube.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hidelooktropic 1y ago
But a bundle is a bundle

deepsun 1y ago

I think those bills didn't go through decommissioning process for used bills. It's much easier to just keep $1M on passive cash balance forever. Yes, they lose about $5k/month on lost interest rate, but a bank can afford it.

hgomersall 1y ago
These are bank notes so they are a liability of the fed. Them holding them doesn't mean they have more money, they just have less liability.
- deepsun 1y ago
  Yep. Imagine if they put those banknotes through decommissioning, but didn't actually destroy them. Some day they would put it out (or get it stolen), and now there's unaccounted (counterfeit?) cash in circulation. Better to keep it real.
necovek 1y ago
$5k/month or $60k/year is roughly 6% of annual conformal interest rate — is there any bank that will provide that much return in USA today? (There are investment funds which usually do, but there are no guarantees there)
- deepsun 1y ago
  I used AFR [1] that are from 4% to 5%. One cannot give loans lower than that. Any mortgage is higher than that. [1] https://www.irs.gov/applicable-federal-rates https://www.irs.gov/applicable-federal-rates

tmnvix 1y ago

> I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" Here's $1,000,000 in $50 notes at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Museum: https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/2817090_qnRbbX_qbwjnL_Owhm522NbMiE7dxeuXqCUT7oVE_iE.jpg https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/2817090_qnRbbX_q...

throwaway422432 1y ago
Reminds me of getting a 20c coin in change with a Kiwi* on the back. My younger self always felt like I had been shortchanged 5c. * AUD 20c was an identical size and same embossed image of the Queen, but a platypus on the reverse.

Retric 1y ago

Rather than counting error it’s likely the ~1 ton weight of stacking bills like this would deform the lower sections and possibly stress the glass depending on thickness. So rather than random filler there may be internal structural bracing so the outside of the cube looks nice and neat. Simplest way to double check is if top and bottom corners have the same bill density.

trhway 1y ago
may be they started with a $1M and with time the bills weight compresses the bills, and they have periodically to add more to fill the newly forming emptiness. Kind of inflation.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

moralestapia 1y ago

Museum: "Don't worry, no one will notice". Calvin Liang: "Ackshually ..."

rob_c 1y ago

It's probably hollow to make the display easier and more reliable.

eschneider 1y ago
It is hollow. But it wasn't originally. cough

NoSalt 1y ago

> "How do I know that's not a bunch of ones with a twenty wrapped around it?" ~ Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

tmtvl 1y ago
What's a yout?

wl 1y ago

> personally, the exhibit concept I'm more interested in is "$1M dollars in $100 bills fits in this area" not "Here's $1M in bills." The first concept is mildly interesting while the second is just a stunt. They have that maybe 50 feet away. It fits in a briefcase. Also, $1 million in $20s.

Wowfunhappy 1y ago

...I actually think you're being too nice. The exhibit implies that this is how big a cube of a million dollars would be. You can use it to get a sense of how much a million is. If it's 50% too big, that's a serious mistake! They should, like, take down the exhibit until it's fixed. You can't just make one of the bars on a graph taller because it looks more impressive, or your pen slipped, or whatever else. This thing is inaccurate and they should fix it.

RyanOD 1y ago

Or, the cube was surplus?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jaisio 1y ago

Fun fact: "area" denotes 2D. The 3D term is "volume".