How are US pennies made?

Yes. They re-engraved them in 1974, and again in the early 1980s, making them shallower each time. And not for the better. The early Lincoln cents were sculptural, the new ones are just blah. I wonder if it's so they don't break through the copper plating.

Let's see. Penny & nickel, worth face. The dime, quarter, and half, add up to .62 troy ounces. At $11.96 spot price for silver, that's $7.44, plus 6 cents for the penny and nickel, so $7.50 worth of coins. So just in metal value you've got just under 3 gallons of gasoline worth of coins there. Funny how that works.

Dave Hinz

Sounds like a neat way, but I'll just take the gummints word that they are 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, though they didn't say whether that was by weight or volume.

So, let's just do it the bean counter's way.

Copper is pretty close to the density of zinc; It's only about 14% denser, so it don't much matter whether the US Mint was talking weight or volume.

Assuming a penny is say .05" thick, and ignoring the copper on the edge, you'd be pretty close if you said the thickness of the copper on one side would have to be 1.25% of the total thickness, or .05 * .0125 = .000625", less than one thou....Pretty thin, huh?

Jeff

Um? I'm seeing a 26% difference. Copper: density of 8.96 gm/cc Zinc: density of 7.13 gm/cc

Be easy enough to set up a mill & do some experiements. I'm not up to a

english----england, somehow the two words are similar...

cheers T.Alan

Gotta stop doing math in my head, dammit.....

Jeff

Wowza! I didn't even think about the silver value.

I'd just gone on the web and found that regular gas was selling for arounc 30 cents a gallon in 1964. And those coins I gave him had a face value of 91 cents, then and now....

I think I paid the coin dealer about $14 plus a couple of bucks shipping for that cased set of uncirculated coins. That seems even fairer now that you mentioed the silver value.

Jeff

Of course. You lot did invent the language, and we have perfected it.

See? Here is a perfect example. In your language, that means, roughly, "thank you". In our language, it means it's time for a drink. I think anyone could agree that our version is better.

In truth, the decay of value of coins is inflation. It is reflected in the cost of gold, the cost of cars, the cost of silver, the cost of everything. Inflation is the way the government can tax you by removing value from inside your checking account in an almost painless, low hassle manner. When you see interest rates going up "to control the increase of inflation" what you are really seeing is the government increasing its ability to sell treasury notes, which are generated on big printing presses, just like 20 dollar bills. Treasury notes are currency with interest. Money they receive for printing these notes for you can be used to pay for the cost of running a war in Iraq, or Afghanistan. You can buy a house with them, pay off your car with them. Houses used to cost 20,000, now they cost 250,000. A new Chevrolet could be bought for 1700. Gold at this time was 35 per ounce. Now its 630 per ounce. If you take out the effect of inflation, gasoline, houses, cars, food...almost everything is near what it was 40 years ago.

You guys have punched my "dump" button...

Brownnsharp

Not sure, but it could be an indication of a small lunch.

Everything you've said is true---but you failed to mention that that ounce of gold you mentioned still weighs 480 grains. In other words, money is worthless. How I yearn for the days when a dollar was still worth 25 cents.

And "English" sounds very similar to the "Angle ish" that the Angles spoke when they invaded Britain, despite the reality that they no longer sound very similar at all. jk

Methinks you mean "anglos", as in Anglo-Saxon.

Or perhaps "Anglo"land, which sounds suspiciously like what we now call England?

I forget - did the Normans arrive before, or after the Anglo-Saxons? Most likely before, I'd guess, otherwise it might be "Normanland" today. Then again, there is Normandy...

Actually that's the same folk. In 410 AD the Germanic tribes from Angeln, Saxony, Frisia, & Jutland invaded and the resulting mishmash got named Anglo-Saxon, because the king titled himself "Rex Angul-Saxonum" or "king of the anglo-saxons" and because the Jutes & Frisians were mostly along for the ride, with the Angles & Saxons being the big dogs.

The last Anglo-Saxon king died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 fighting William of Normandy. He became the new king, booted all the Anglo-Saxon lords, and replaced them with Norman ones, which will be familiar to anybody who's had their company bought out and downsized.

This event also totally changed the English language, with the result that Old English is barely comprehensible to a modern person.

Some of the places have names like Sussex (south Saxons), Wessex (west Saxons), Middlesex (middle Saxons), and East Anglia (east Angles)

Sorry. Too much SCA...

-gc

SCA is fun, sorta... Almost like work sometimes. :)

Seen a variant on that one floating around - Something to the tune of "I ain't afraid of the bullet with my name on it - There's no dodging that one. It's the ones marked "To whom it may concern" that bother me"

Does that mean that I have been essentially correct all these years I've been telling people that the root language of English is German?

Jeff

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house w**re. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.

James Nicoll, 1846-1918

"If I'm going to reach out to the the Democrats then I need a third hand.There's no way I'm letting go of my wallet or my gun while they're around."

"Democrat. In the dictionary it's right after demobilize and right before demode` (out of fashion).

-Buddy Jordan 2001

Indeed

Gunner Asch

"If I'm going to reach out to the the Democrats then I need a third hand.There's no way I'm letting go of my wallet or my gun while they're around."

"Democrat. In the dictionary it's right after demobilize and right before demode` (out of fashion).

-Buddy Jordan 2001

You bet. It's a Germanic language, just like German, Flemish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, etc. Wikipedia has more information than you want, here:

Pretty much. Look at Old English and Old High German and it's rather obvious.

It helps to have a roommate that's a language major specializing in German, too. :-)

-gc