It is no longer a secret that the Olympic gold medals don’t contain a lot of the actual yellow metal. But how much gold do they have, and what about silver and bronze medals?

Here’s the breakdown:

Gold medal: Only 1.2% of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medal is actually gold. The other 98.8% is silver.

Silver medal: The silver medal is the only one that truly lives up to its name. It has the same weight as gold and is made from 100% actual silver.

Bronze medal: The bronze medal is lighter and is made up of 95% copper and 5% zinc.

The data are provided by Compound Interest.

It is even more interesting how Japan got the needed metals to make approximately 5,000 medals that are currently being handed out at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

As part of the “Tokyo 2020 Medal Project,” Japan collected approximately 78,985 tons of used small electronic devices. Out of those, 6.21 million were used mobile phones. These were collected all across Japan from April 2017 till the end of March 2019.

Japan managed to collect 32kg worth of gold, 3,500kg worth of silver, and 2,200kg worth of bronze…read more.