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Athletes who won Olympic medals at the Paris Olympics actually got an old piece of Eiffel Tower?
At present, the Paris Olympics are the only host city to put places of interest on medals. So, the athlete who wins the competition can...... Bringing Paris home?
In February 2024, the organizers of the Paris Olympic Games unveiled the Olympic medals designed by jeweler Chaumet, and we can see that the medals of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are inlaid with a hexagonal iron block in the middle, and this piece of iron weighing 18 grams is not ordinary iron, but the old building materials of the real Eiffel Tower.
The hexagon in the middle is a small piece of the remains of the Eiffel Tower. Image source network
Since its construction in the 80s of the 19th century, the iron frame of the Eiffel Tower has undergone several renovations, and some of the iron pieces have been removed. It is said that the scrap has been kept in a secret warehouse by the Eiffel Tower operating company, and today, it has been made into 5084 medals......
The pieces of iron were collected during the Eiffel Tower's many renovations
Old building materials have been turned into Olympic medals, which sounds quite fresh. In fact, many people should already know that Olympic gold medals are not made of pure gold. The last time an Olympic gold medal was in Stockholm in 1912 more than 100 years ago and has since ceased to be available, but today the IOC has stipulated that the gold medal must contain 550 grams of fine silver and 6 grams of gold.
A gold broker wrote in 2012 that if a 400-gram medal of pure gold was to be made, it would cost about $25,000 at the gold price at the time (2012), and the organizers would have to spend $50 million on the medal.
This gold medal from the Stockholm Olympics is pure gold
Now, however, with the Olympic Games pursuing sustainable development goals, the organizers of each edition have "played" new tricks on the medals. And the meaning of an Olympic medal may not be as simple as "gold".
The medals at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro contain a variety of recyclable materials. The ribbons used to hang the medals are made from recycled old plastic bottles, and the silver medals are made from old car parts, X-rays and broken mirrors. The Brazil Mint also made copper medals from its own scrap copper materials at that time.
Medals, ribbons, and wooden boxes all contain recyclable materials
In addition, the wood used to store the wooden boxes for the medals also comes from sustainable forests in Brazil, which are sustainably managed, saving the forest from deforestation and allowing more wildlife to live in it.
At the Tokyo Olympics, the organizers used the "garbage alchemy" method, turning the electronic "garbage" provided by Japan residents into medals. According to the BBC report, as of 2018, the organizers have received donations from the public for more than 4 million used mobile phones and 30,000 tons of small electronic devices.
Whose old phone is this medal......
In order to meet the requirements of the Olympic Organizing Committee for Olympic medals, people can extract precious metals from electronic waste, such as 1g of gold from 35~40 mobile phones. Known as "urban mining," the practice is used to extract 30 kilograms of gold, 4,100 kilograms of silver, and 2,700 kilograms of copper out of thousands of tons of e-waste.
The proofreader has a big brain hole again!
This may raise awareness of recycling e-waste. At present, e-waste has become the world's fastest-growing amount of waste, even to the point of "e-waste tsunami", the world's old home appliances, old screens and old instruments have become hundreds of millions of tons of garbage, and only 20% of electronic products are recycled.
The problem of e-waste needs to be solved urgently, and if there is no scientific recycling, it will pollute the environment and endanger human health
In fact, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver also included a small amount of electronic component waste in the medals, although the recycling was smaller, only about 1%.
The "Fight Waste" competition has also continued this year, and the spectator seats at the Paris Olympics are also made of renewable plastic, which are actually based on the local garbage bins and the millions of water bottle caps in the bins? The podium at the Paris Olympics was made from recycled plastic food containers. So while you're watching this year's exciting sporting extravaganza, don't forget to keep an eye on the little infrastructure.
Are these stadium seats actually discarded garbage bins? Image courtesy of Markus Spiske
Also worth your attention are the Paralympic medals. Paralympic medals have been designed in Braille since Innsbruck 1976, while at Rio they have been turned into "rattles" that make a "rattle" sound when shaken, with the gold medal rattling loudest and the bronze medal the softest, so that the visually impaired can simply shake it to know what it is.
The Beijing Paralympic Winter Games ring is engraved in Braille on the outermost side. Image source network
The Olympics is not only a grand sporting event, but it also has many details that deserve your attention, and in addition to the wonderful sports, the cooperation of scientists and social institutions in various fields is also very interesting.
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Source: Popular Science China