My bucket of pennies weighs 58 pounds. Approximately how many dollars is this? ************************************************** ************************************************** ANSWERS
08-30-04, 03:19 PM Georgia85 580 dollars give or take a few. Wink Actually you should subtract the weight of the container from the total weight of 58 lbs.
A penny is about 1/1000 of a pound. So...1000 pennies = a pound... 58,000 = 58 pounds 100 pennies in a dollar 58,000/100=580
How's that sound? ******** 08-30-04, 03:49 PM MommyTimesTwo Assuming that the container weighs 8 oz (half a pound), there are 57.5 lbs or 920 oz of pennies.
x = number of pennies
x/920 oz = 1/0.088185 oz (the weight of one penny)
0.088185x = 920 x = 10433 pennies, which is $104.33 ******** 08-30-04, 04:02 PM Georgia85 Wow - quite a bit of difference between our 2 figures. Reckon you just need to get you a handful of wrappers and start rolling Wink ******** 08-30-04, 05:23 PM MommyTimesTwo Our answers aren't as different as you think, George. The problem is that your guesstimate is off--a penny is about 1/200th of a pound (0.005512 pounds, to be exact.) Using your same method, we'd find that there are 11600 pennies, or $116.00. Adjusting for the weight of the bucket gives us $115.00, or about $9 more than I got. And it took less work to get answer
(addendum--that average weight is for pennies made after 1982. I'm assuming the majority of pennies in the bucket were.) ******** 08-30-04, 10:30 PM decal Oboyoboyoboyoboyoboy--I get to mention my favorite site!
Check out The Megapenny Site! ******** 08-31-04, 08:46 AM Georgia85 Apparently my weight source for a penny was incorrect. So using the information from Decal's site I come up with $154. That's going by the assumption that one penny is 1/10 of an ounce.
Then again, according to the US Mint a penny weighs 2.5 grams and using that number I come up with $175.55 give or take. ******** 08-31-04, 02:30 PM MommyTimesTwo 2.5 grams is what I used for my estimate.
2.5 g ~ 0.088185 oz
If one penny weighs 0.088185 oz, then 57.5 lbs (or 920 oz) is 10,433 pennies (rounded to make a whole penny), or $104.33, which is what I got before. I'm curious how you're getting $175.55 George? Confused ******** 08-31-04, 03:16 PM Karrow I'm moving this thread to the Mathematics forum in the Science category so that the Enthusiasts there can join in the debate! Smile ******** 08-31-04, 04:22 PM Georgia85 Mx2...I'm not good in math but this is what I did:
and DUH! never mind. Why did I think there were 60 pennies in a dollar? Geesh...no wonder I am so good pinching pennies Wink
I alter my answer now to show $105.33 minus the weight of the container. Whew, I'm exhausted now. ******** 08-31-04, 04:40 PM methos My simple answer: about $98.73.
My more complicated answer:
There are a couple complications. I just took 50 pennies and weighed them. The average weight was 2.6647 grams. 58 pounds is 26,308.3575 grams, so that gives you an answer of 26308.3575 grams/2664676 grams/penny = 9,873 pennies = $98.73.
But if only it were that simple. I noticed a bimodal distribution. Pennies before a certain date (15 of them) had a mass of 3.08 +/- 6 g (95% confidence interval), and pennies after a certain date (35 of them) had a mass of 2.49 +/- 15 g.
So, in a bucket of recent pennies weighing 58 pounds, you have about $105.78, and can say with 95% confidence that you have between $99.85 and $112.46.
In a bucket of all old pennies, you have about $85.44 and can say with 95% cetainty that you have between $83.91 and $87.03.
Figuring out the probabilities based on a bimodal distribution is more complicated, but in a mixed bucket you clearly have a significantly greater than 95% certainty that it contains between $83.91 (lower bound for all old pennies) and [b]$112.46[/bn] (upper bound for all new pennies).
If we assume that the ratio of old to new pennies in the bucket is about the same as in the 50 I measured (15:35) the you have about $98.73 (the simple average) but I won't attempt to calculate a better confidence interval on that because I don't know how comparable my collection of 50 pennies is in age to those in your bucket.
Of course, none of this accounts for the weight of the bucket, since I have no idea what kind of bucket you are using. ******** 08-31-04, 04:44 PM Georgia85 I'm taking my pennies and going back the health forums where I know a thing or two! Razz ******** 08-31-04, 05:16 PM MommyTimesTwo Methos, being the mathemetician, gave a probability statement with a range of answers.
I, being an accountant, made an averaged estimate.
Are there any physicists who can tell us the value of the pennies based on the net mass of copper and nickle? Or any psychologists who can help convince us that the pennies are only a tool symbolizing the abstract concept of value? Wink ******** 08-31-04, 08:42 PM methos Well, I did start it with and averaged estimate in bold Wink
P.S. - I actually hate math... I'm an atomic spectroscopist/chemist (my research until recently was analyzing the concentrations of metals), so I'd be more likely to give you the value based on the masses of copper and nickel than most physicists Smile. ******** 08-31-04, 10:15 PM MommyTimesTwo lol!!
This is what I love the most about AP. Look at the original post--it's a simple, straight forward question. But here we have such an interesting conversation going on about how much pennies weigh! I keep coming back and seeing how many different ways we can all figure the same question. It rocks! Smile (BTW--is a penny's worth of metal worth a penny?? I've always wanted to know and you seem the right person to ask!) ******** 09-01-04, 01:18 PM Georgia85 And I would like to add why I initially had 60 pennies = a dollar. On my defense, I've been counting minutes on a calling card and well....60 minutes in an hour....guess I just had 60 stuck on the brain. I just didn't want ya'll to think there were blonde roots under this black dye Wink ******** 10-13-04, 05:38 PM donaldekliros NCcichlid:
TAKE THE DAMN PENNIES OUT TOF THE BUCKET & COUNT THEM. Put them in paper rolls & bank them.
When you take then to a bank, they will recount them & then you will know for sure what you have in dollars.
Don ******** 10-11-05, 07:57 PM Sherasi NC,
how many dollars did you have? Big GrinBig GrinBig GrinBig Grin
Methos,
IS a penny worth a penny of matériel? ******** 10-12-05, 01:06 AM Professor If one of them happens to be a 1909-S-VDB, that'll add on the order of $1K more to the value of the collection! Also, NCcichlid also didn't happen to mention if the bucket is made of solid 24K gold. Big Grin
Methos's answer is truly masterful. Way to go! Smile ******** 10-12-05, 01:11 AM Professor
quote: Originally posted by donaldekliros: TAKE THE DAMN PENNIES OUT TOF THE BUCKET & COUNT THEM. Put them in paper rolls & bank them.
Ah, the engineer's approach. Wink But then you need an economist to estimate how much to subtract for the value of your time, effort, and tedium... Smile ******** 10-12-05, 01:24 AM FredPuli 58 pounds of pennies
quote: Originally posted by Professor:
quote: Originally posted by donaldekliros: TAKE THE DAMN PENNIES OUT TOF THE BUCKET & COUNT THEM. Put them in paper rolls & bank them.
Ah, the engineer's approach. Wink But then you need an economist to estimate how much to subtract for the value of your time, effort, and tedium... Smile
Well perhaps an accountant to work out the value of your time and effort. If they are good enough they may swing it so you can declare a tax loss and put you in credit with the Revenue for next year, eh, Mx2 ? ******** 10-12-05, 09:12 AM methos
quote: Originally posted by Sherasi: Methos,
IS a penny worth a penny of matériel?
According to the mint, each penny costs 0.93 cents to make (that's production and materials). ******** 10-12-05, 11:05 AM DorianGreyed And then there is capital gains tax to consider. (Or did Bush eliminate that?) ******** 10-14-05, 03:34 AM tsaeb Isn't there one of those machines nearby you (in a bank or a supermarket), which counts all those pennies? The machine charges, I think, a few cents on the dollar. One such supermarket near me has such a machine, and one can begin to get back one's money to count the pennies if one brings one's own grocery bags--worth 2 cents each! ******** 11-15-05, 02:43 PM FlyingHellfish Well, according to Google, the current conversion rate is:
1 British pound = 1.7416 U.S. dollar
So if you have 58 pounds in pennies, that's equivalent to $101.01, or about 10101 pennies.
Big Grin ******** 11-15-05, 02:45 PM FlyingHellfish
quote: Originally posted by Professor: If one of them happens to be a 1909-S-VDB, that'll add on the order of $1K more to the value of the collection!
On a personal note, the reason why I started a coin collection when I was about 13 years old was when I stumbled upon a 1924-D penny in the park right down the street from my house Smile
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
Posts: 1641 | Location: North Carolina, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
And it took less work to get answer 
