[akvadrako]

Tungsten doesn't seem especially heavy; it's a little less than gold.

[mminer237]

It's not the heaviest thing in the world, but it's probably the heaviest thing a person could buy a practical cube of. The main metals heavier than lead are gold, iridium, mercury, platinum, tungsten, and uranium.

Uranium is a comparable price and density to tungsten, but buying iridium is gonna be at least 50x the price for something 10% denser.

[idiotsecant]

Uranium at it's elemental density is a comparable price to tungsten??

[laverya]

Yeah, it's part of what makes it so fantastic as armor piercing ammunition. And tank armor.

[laverya]

6 hours later, I'm an idiot who read density instead of price.

Funny thing is, while Depleted Uranium is about the same density as tungsten, it's also a fair bit cheaper (for major nuclear governments) because it's an otherwise nearly useless byproduct of the uranium enrichment process, and there's around a million tons of it sitting in storage worldwide.

[astrange]

How often do you have 2" cubes of gold lying around?

Also, if your house burns down your tungsten cube will still be intact, so you don't have to insure it.

[valbaca]

right, just buy 1kg of gold instead

[elihu]

Tungsten is 19.25, gold is 19.3, and osmium is 22.59 g/cm^3. Tungsten isn't quite the densest material around, but it's in the general ballpark.

[988747]

Also, since the density of tungsten and gold are so close I guess tungsten gets ordered a lot by people intending to forge the counterfeit gold bars...

[postalrat]

And much heavier than lead.