This morning's Radio 4 news broadcast mentioned the discovery of about 48 tons of silver near the Irish coast, and claimed it was worth nearly a billion pounds.
That sum seemed implausibly large, so I checked current silver prices (about 17 pounds per ounce) and calculated a value in the region of 29 million pounds. Some people seem unable to tell whether or not numbers make sense.
Incidentally there are three different 'tons' in use; fortunately they differ by only a few percent.
The metric ton (or tonne) = 1000 kg
The imperial ton (long ton) = 20 hundred weight = 2240 pounds, roughly 1016 kg
The short ton = 20 short hundred weight = 2000 pounds, roughly 907 kg
Americans use the short ton
I used the imperial ton in my calculation
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There's also a difference in ounces too, standard grocer's ounces versus troy ounces and so on. Though on the scale you are discussing, it would make essentially no difference I suspect.
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