 FACT: Early in the film, Frank and Jake discuss procuring the bar of  gold necessary to repair the ship. During the discussion, Jake says  that he will need to reduce it while retaining all its properties.  Later, when Jake reduces the gold to the size of a small pencil, Liz  easily picks it up. If the "reduced" gold had retained all of its  original properties as Jake said, it should have had the same mass  as a bar of gold.