Talk:Chinese turret ship Dingyuan

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[edit] Numeric accuracy

I came across this article when cleaning up "German gold mark". And I found this page say "In 1881, ..., 1.7 million taels of silver (6.2 million German gold mark)". I know that at least one of the two numbers are wrong.

Around that time, currency exchange rate did not float much. And it's usually proportional to the pure content of precious metal in the silver/gold coins. And I am certain of the following facts

1. 1 Chinese yuan = 0.72 tael = 26.4 ~ 27 grams of 900‰ silver. Taking the average of the two, that means 1 yuan = 24.03 gram of pure silver.
2. 1 gold mark = 5 grams of pure silver.

So 1.7 million taels

= (1.7 million / 0.72) yuan

= (1.7 million / 0.72 * 24.03) grams of silver

= (1.7 million / 0.72 * 24.03 / 5) German gold mark

≈ 11.35 million German gold mark

--Chochopk 04:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)