Pound wise, is the penny foolish?

It has been a tough week!

Jr. came home from school with an assignment where the teacher had a simple comment, "barely meets standard". The assignment was on counting coins!

Considering that she can do upto adding 8+ a number less than 10, it would be surprising if she could count money. The thing that annoyed me was that in spite of spending an hour with her, it was not easy to teach because there are some fundamental problems with counting money, as seen in the eyes of a kindergardener!

There are also some fundamental problems with seeing money the way it is, in the eyes of a metallurgist!

Here is part primer, part facts, part frustration on what I call "Monetary economics"!

First a quick photo tour of the coins in one shot and some related facts the kids are supposed to remember! (this is on top of the counting).

Pictured in front and back are the most common penny, nickel, dime and quarter. The pictures are those of :
Lincoln / Lincoln Memorial
Jefferson / Monticello
Roosevelt / Wreath
Washington / The Bald Eagle

That said, the coins in the USA are not exactly easy to grasp. Why?

We don't call them 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents and 25 cents. We have to call them penny, nickel, dime and quarter respectively. That is one additional layer of memorization that has to be registered. Mentally they have to convert dime to ten before doing a transation. Any guy worth his computational salt will tell you that it is inefficiency built into the counting process.

Next, the coins do not go from smallest to biggest in size (or biggest to smallest like in other countries where the higher denomiations are made of more precious metal and end up smaller coins)! The Nickel sticks out like a, well sore nickel!

Third, the color and lustre of the coins does not show any gradual change from copper to silvery metal. The nickel is dull. The quarter is equally dull considering its composition is the same as the nickel but somehow the finishing leaves it slightly more shiny! The penny is in a world of its own.

As a kid, it would be difficult if the monetary value did not follow the sequence in nomenclature, size, weight, color or texture!

That left me puzzled. That did not make any sense. One would assume(if you have an undergraduate degree in Metallurgy), that the monetary value of a coin is in some way related to the metal content! That said, daddy faded into the background earlier this afternoon and Metallurgist took over. After going through the web for various facts and fact checking, I present to you the table below:

Have not found any table as a quick reference guide yet on my web surfing, so who knows this compilation might actually find some use!

Now for some facts. The US Mint kept changing metallic compositions of the various coins because as metal prices fluctuated, the cost of making certain coins was significantly more than the value of a coin!

If you look at the old compositions of coins at todays metal prices it looks like the quarter will be worth $2.9 and a dime worth $1.15 and the penny would be worth 2 cents! Understandably zinc got subsituted for copper and the silver is all gone from today's currency. Still by todays standard, the metal value of these coins is not a 1:5:10:25 but a 1:11:4:10. Again, it is the nickel that sticks out and it is the root cause of all counting mistakes made by Jr.!

The penny makes sense today having a metal value of 0.6 cents (sure there is manufacturing cost, which would be hard to keep at 0.4 cents in the future, unless the manufacturing eventually moves to China. A thought which has been considered by economists!).

Pound wise, it is the Nickel that does not make sense!

Hopefully, will be able to teach Jr. to count money...

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Coins, Fishes and gold powders...

After reading Deepak's post on the coins people throw into water fountains and fish ponds, I had a theory!!

I do see the occasional quarter or nickel, other than the usual plethora of pennies. Incidentally I have a theory on why people throw pennies in the shopping mall fish ponds!

When we were in Waikiki a few years ago saw a mall with a fountain and lots of Coi fish. The bottom of the water was filled with pennies, international coins, but mostly coins which were a golden bronze color. The fish looked large and healthy.

Came home after that trip and got a fishtank! When the fish were sick, the PETCO dude gave me fish medicine. Guess what element the medicine contains ? Lots of COPPER!! So maybe the copper in the coins helps the fishes survive ??

This theory immediately made another connection in my head. My dad told me during my wedding that there is a reason why we wear a gold ring in our right had and eat on a silver plate. Apparently the gold rubs against the silver and we ingest trace amounts of gold and silver every day and these elements are good for us in trace amounts.

I knew that the film legend MGR was known to attribute his strength and complexion to "Thanga Baspam" and "Velli Baspam" (literally gold and silver powder) which he used to take as part of his diet. As a kid, I have taken these powders when I was really sick and the western doctors gave up on me. The local Siddha healers gave me these powders and a whole bunch of other concoctions which probably saved my life! But my dad's statement did raise some questions like :

1. If this is good, how come women dont wear the same ring and eat in the same plate ?
2. If this is good, then why wait till the wedding to give that gold ring and the silver plate ?
3. What about copper ? Is that why we drink water from copper vessels ?
4. What about lead ? Didn't we all drink rasam from our great grandma's "Eeya Chombu" which probably would have retarded us all with lead poisoning!? or maybe we need lead in small amounts too ?

Hopefully there are people out there who have answers to these questions, and who knows my theory for the pennies in the fish ponds may not be way off the mark!!

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