I asked chatty to help me with the math on this. Now that's volume!
Let’s estimate how many 100-piece poker chip racks you could fit on a typical cargo ship from China, using a standard container ship as the reference.
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Step 1: Size of a Standard Container
Most cargo ships carry 20-foot or 40-foot containers.
A 40-foot container (FEU) has approx:
Volume: 67.5 cubic meters (2,385 cubic feet)
Internal dimensions: ~12.03m x 2.35m x 2.39m
Let’s focus on 40-foot containers, since they’re more common on ocean liners.
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Step 2: Number of Containers on a Cargo Ship
A large container ship (like a Maersk Triple E) can carry around 18,000–24,000 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units).
One 40-foot container = 2 TEUs
So such a ship can carry roughly 9,000–12,000 FEUs
Let’s use 10,000 FEUs for this estimate.
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Step 3: Size of a 100-Count Poker Chip Rack
A typical 100-chip rack (with chips stacked in 5 rows of 20) is about:
8 inches long × 3 inches wide × 1.5 inches tall
That’s about 0.021 cubic feet or 0.000595 cubic meters
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Step 4: How Many Racks per Container?
One 40-foot container holds ~2,385 cubic feet
So:
2,385 / 0.021 ≈ 113,571 racks per container
That’s ~11.36 million poker chips per container
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Step 5: Total Racks on the Whole Ship
113,571 racks × 10,000 containers = ~1.14 billion racks
That’s 114 billion poker chips in total
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Final Answer:
You could fit approximately 1.14 billion 100-chip racks — or 114 billion poker chips — on a fully loaded modern ocean cargo ship using standard 40-foot containers.
Let me know if you want it calculated by weight instead of volume!