Gold Bullion Vault - Periodic Table of Videos

We're INSIDE a Gold Bullion Vault.
See also Brady's Objectivity series: http://bit.ly/Objectivity (science treasures)
The Bank of England protects about £197 billion ($315bn) worth of gold, according to the mostly recently published figures.
Film by Brady Haran. Featuring Professor Martyn Poliakoff.

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The vaults are off limits, but the Bank of England Museum will let you lift a real gold bar: http://bit.ly/TJ4BVk

More of our videos about gold: http://bit.ly/Re3Lkp

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From the School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/chemistry/index.aspx

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Closed Caption:

in some ways I think it's quite
disappointing seeing these bars because
the gold is an exciting element
it has interesting chemistry and it's
just sitting here doing nothing
it's enormously impressive but it's a
bit sad
rather like a mausoleum where they're
the dead gold is sitting waiting for
people to remember it could be doing
exciting reactions and so on
we're in the vault
the bullion vaults of the Bank of
England I've never seen so much gold in
fact I've never seen so much of any
element
so we're standing here and each shelf
here has got a ton of gold which is
worth 35 million pounds at today's price
tomorrow it might be worth even ball
it's very secure we've been through a
whole series of security checks no money
is allowed here to make sure we don't
take anything out
and so we're both really excited to be
here
so the camera may be shaking with
brady's excitement
I never seen large lumps of gold and to
see it all rounds is extraordinary
once first reaction is that he can't
possibly be real because normally you
don't see such things
looks like chocolates in the duty free
at the airport or something like that
but these really are solid gold bars and
it's quite extraordinary
there isn't any smell because metals
don't smell and it's very quiet because
of the thick walls and to keep it secure
the weather's been very cold recently
and I was ready to be shivering but it's
nice and warm by suppose gold color also
gives you a feeling of warmth so it may
be partly psychological
the reason why the bank has got this
store is because not only the bank of
england but other central banks like to
keep some of their money reserves in
gold because the price of gold is very
stable or the value of gold
compared to the value of currencies
which can go up and down and so every
country has a certain proportion of its
reserves in gold and if you look at the
statistics the UK at the moment has
about three hundred and ten tons of gold
in its reserves but there's much more
gold here than that because it belongs
to all sorts of people not just to the
bank of england
this vault is part of a complex of
different rooms I haven't seen the other
rooms but altogether if you look at the
bank's annual report
it's worth a hundred and ninety seven
billion pounds that is 197,000 million
pounds and that's quite a serious sum of
money they people buy and sell the gold
and each block of gold has its own
number like your car has a registration
number and when people buy and and trade
the gold they don't actually take the
bar home but just that number is
transferred from the sellers account to
the buyers account and the goal just sit
here quietly
apparently the oldest bar of gold here
has been here since nineteen sixteen
that's the first world war nearly a
hundred years ago but the beauty of gold
is a chemical element is that it's very
unreactive so it looks just the same now
as it did in nineteen sixteen it hasn't
tarnished
it hasn't got oxide layers on the
surface it hasn't started creeping
changing its shape and so on
so come over here because they've given
me two bars that we can look at
so we've got two different styles of
gold
which are both the so-called London good
delivery bars which means that their
weight is in a certain limit range and
in fact each of them has its precise way
to put on them in a rather strange unit
called a troy ounce
so this one is 399 . 100
this one was made in australia and this
one apparently came from Switzerland in
his slightly heavier 400 . dose 75
I must say this one looks much nicer
it's published more and this one looks a
bit like a loaf of bread but is rather
miserable low for braids but pretty
fantastic lamp of gold
now one of the things you know about
gold is that it's really heavy so I'm
going to see whether i can actually lift
this with one hand and I can sort of
lift it
but not easily two hands it's quite easy
so this ways each of these in more
understandable units ways
something like 12 . four kilos or 28
pounds
so for those of you who use imperial
units that's to stone
each of these is worth about four
hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds
you could buy two quite nice houses for
a block like this or for a whole shelf
of these which contains a ton
you could buy a hundred and thirty seven
of the up-market rolls-royce cars
so take your choice these blocks are a
bit like breaks and if you took all the
gold that had ever been mined and put
them together like a construction kit to
make a big block you would end up with
the block that was 20 meters cubed that
60 feet on each side which would easily
fit for example and the legs of the
Eiffel Tower wouldn't look all that big
just as a building on the street and
that's all the gold there ever has been
I did a little calculation on the way
here that I weigh about the same as six
of these bars of gold
which means that if I were worth my
weight in gold
I'd be worth a bit over two and a half
million pounds
I was a bit disappointed thought I might
be worth more but still
so not only would all the gold ever
mined it here under the legs of the
Eiffel Tower
it's been here quite easily by my
reckoning that cube of about 20 meters
in each direction would probably fit
three times from there to over there
same for each side and you could
probably stack it on top of a few times
as well so not that much gold
now we actually filmed a bit more on the
vote we haven't used so stay tuned we
might use that stone in the meantime
we've made plenty of other films about
gold we have evaporated that we have
dissolved that you can check them out
also