How Much Would Cinderella’s Glass Slippers Cost?

October 21, 2012 in Editorial

Antariksh Bothale, a mechanical engineer, has found that Cinderella could safely walk, dance, and even run in glass slippers. How much would these slippers cost? Centives decided to find out.

Bothale assumes that Cinderella is wearing slippers made of thermal toughened glass. The heels on the slippers are modelled as cylinders that have a 2cm diameter and are 6cm in length. If you wanted to mold glass into the shape of a heel then you’d need a sheet of glass that was 6cm long and 6.28 cm wide.

Let’s assume that the rest of the slipper is both twice as long as the heel and twice as wide (remember you’ll need enough material to fold up over the foot). This means that you need five sheets of that glass, or a single sheet that was 30cm long and 31.4cm wide, to make the entire slipper. This sheet would have to be thick enough to withstand the forces exerted on it. The kind folks here are willing to send us a sheet of toughened glass with those dimensions for a mere $50.62. Cinderella needs a pair of the slippers – hopefully one left and one right, since she has to charm the prince by dancing with him, so can’t afford to have two left feet – and this doubles the cost to $101.24.

The slippers are fairly intricate and you’ll need a master craftsman to turn the glass into slippers. On the high end these individuals charge about $35 an hour, and if you assume they put in a standard 8 hour work day to make them, then you’ll be paying $280 for labour.

So that’s $381.24 for the inputs alone. These are luxury slippers with magical workmanship. High end boutique stores markup their shoes by 500% and if we apply a similar markup to Cinderella’s footwear then The Fairy Godmother had to shell out $2,287.44 so that Cinderella could live happily ever after.

For that price, they better fit!

If you enjoyed this, then you’ll probably enjoy reading how many lives another Disney Princess, Pocahontas, saved as a result of her actions. Or find out how much it would cost to go to Hogwarts. These are just some of the editorials we’ve written, you can find the most popular ones in the Greatest Hits section. And please, stay in touch:

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