[HN Gopher] Using Euro coins as weights (2004)
___________________________________________________________________
Using Euro coins as weights (2004)
Author : Tomte
Score : 130 points
Date : 2024-10-20 10:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rubinghscience.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rubinghscience.org)
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Water is also a convenient and accurate measure of weight if you
| know its volume.
| diggan wrote:
| I guess it depends on what kind of accuracy you're aiming for.
| The density/weight of water changes depending on temperature,
| salinity, pressure, impurities and probably other factors.
|
| So if you're either deep into a volcano or on the top of a cold
| mountain and need 0.001g precision, you might want to find an
| alternative way :)
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I think the volcano might be useful - we could use the heat
| to steam distill the water, then on our trip up the mountain
| we could take a quick stop at sea level to conduct our
| measurements.
| Luc wrote:
| Neat. Also, all the copper coins (1, 2, and 5 cent) are 1.67 mm
| thick, so three stacked is half a centimeter to good accuracy.
| drug_trw wrote:
| Very useful information, I used it around that time period with a
| lego balance scale to measure weights of various drugs in high
| school.
| rchowe wrote:
| I built a computer vision device that used the top-down area of a
| penny as a calibration standard. Coins are useful, easy-to-get
| items that have relatively tight manufacturing tolerances.
| cassepipe wrote:
| What about wear ? Were they only new coins ?
| Retric wrote:
| I've never seen significant ware on a coin in circulation.
|
| Have you?
| seqizz wrote:
| I've seen enough wear to prevent them to be calibration
| material at least.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Depends on what your tolerances are. If you only need to
| be within a mm a coin is going to beat that by an order
| of magnitude.
|
| We use a pack of cigarettes as a gauge for one of the
| jobs we do. Quick, (not so) cheap, and readily available.
| May have to standardize on a vape though in the near
| future.
| swores wrote:
| I have often, though I suspect not enough to make a
| significant difference to someone who is already OK with
| the slight variance between un-worn coins.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I have coins that originally had milled edges that are now
| completely smooth.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Only on counterfeit PS1 coins, before the coins were
| redesigned to make them harder to fake
| wongarsu wrote:
| Ever since coin clipping got out of hand in the 1700s most
| coins feature milled edges or edge inscriptions. They make
| the edges more resistant to wear and make any wear easy to
| spot.
|
| Of course there's a limit to the precision you can get from
| coins, but considering the scale of their production and the
| account of handling they see they are surprisingly good
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| _> in the 1700s_
|
| It's been happening since ever.
| rchowe wrote:
| Our area measurement application did not require that tight a
| tolerance (we were estimating yield on broken material). If I
| needed that tight a tolerance, I could have gotten proof
| coins from the mint, or potentially switched to using a real
| calibration standard like a gauge block.
| qup wrote:
| Also a penny is .750 exactly. None of the other US coins have a
| "useful" diameter.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The US nickel is so close to 5 grams that I've seen them used
| as weights in a laboratory.
| nathell wrote:
| Euro coins circulating in various countries of the Eurozone have
| different obverses - I wonder whether that affects weight?
| simonjgreen wrote:
| I was thinking similar, but then it occurred to me that they
| may be debossed, rather than engraved, so no change to
| material? Not a coin expert :D
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Any additive/subtractive method at that scale for coin faces
| sounds like a huge waste of time and effort compared to just
| pressing the design, but also not a coin expert.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| Striking/pressing with a shaped die is the traditional
| process, not least because the material itself used to be
| the store of value rather than the provenance of the mint--
| The coin shape was really there to certify how much
| gold/silver it contained and that the government had been
| paid whatever tax (seignorage) was owed on the ore.
|
| Now that we've lived in a fiat-currency world for decades,
| it's possible that new processes are being used as the
| concerns are different-- anti-counterfeiting measures are
| more important than anti-shaving ones now, for instance.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Yes, they stamp/press it and the deformation of that process
| is also used to fit the inner to the outer part on the 1 and
| 2 Euro coins.
|
| See this German children's program:
| https://youtu.be/nBuSmbcp1AE (seems to only have German
| subtitles, but they are quite visual)
| Someone wrote:
| Probably not significantly. It would make it too hard to build
| machines that accept all euro coin variants, yet reject cheaper
| non-euro coins of similar proportions.
| arlort wrote:
| The weight is set by law at least to the 10th of a gram.
| Couldn't find an explicitly set margin of error though
| kd5bjo wrote:
| At one point, I worked out that US dimes, quarters, and half
| dollars all weigh $20/lb (iirc), which made the task of counting
| my accumulated change a lot easier.
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_United_States_dol...
| confirms that, and shows it works for dollar coins, too (I'm
| using the weights in grains because that makes the comparison
| easier; a pound is exactly 7,000 grains)
|
| Dime: 35 gr
|
| Quarter: 87.5 gr
|
| Half-dollar: 175 gr
|
| Dollar: 350 gr
| t-3 wrote:
| Nickel is ~5 grams. Dollar bill is ~1 gram.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I like how easy it is to remember nickel == 5 g.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| The "ten US nickles is always 50g" mantra has helped me
| detect several defective scales (whether intentional or
| not, I want accuracy).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Note that the names for the first three coins are all _units
| of subdivision_. "Quarter" and "half" most obviously, _dime_
| comes from the Latin _decima_ , meaning "one tenth". The
| equivalent Roman coin was the _denarius_.
|
| "Nickel" and "penny" break that pattern, with the first
| referencing the composition of the coin (originally called a
| "half-dime"), and _penny_ is a measure of weight, varying by
| locale. The British penny is 1 /240 of a Tower pound (later
| decimalised to 1/100 in the 1960s), whilst an American
| pennyweight (used for example in reference to nails) is
| 1/1000th of a pound.
|
| <https://www.etymonline.com/word/nickel>
|
| <https://www.etymonline.com/word/penny>
| kragen wrote:
| That's because that was the price of silver. The mint was for
| many centuries a way to get your precious metals divided into
| units of standardized weights that were stamped to certify
| their authenticity, thus facilitating commerce, though
| frequently rulers succumbed to the temptation of "debasing"
| them by diluting the precious metals with so-called "base" (in
| the sense of "low", "contemptible") metals such as tin, lead,
| and zinc.
|
| So quarters weren't worth 25C/ because the government said so;
| they were worth 25C/ because they were made out of 25C/ worth
| of silver.
|
| That's the same reason "peso" means "weight" and the "shekel"
| and "pound" take their name from units of weight.
|
| This ended in 01965 in the USA, followed by the end of the gold
| standard, since which the dollar has lost 96% of its value
| relative to the precious metals that used to define it. The
| consensus among economists is that this is a good thing because
| it prevents deflation. I'm not sure.
| swores wrote:
| Off topic, but may I ask why you use a leading zero when
| writing the year? (01965 rather than 1965)
|
| You're not the only person I've seen do it on this site, and
| I can't recall ever seeing it not on this site, so I'm
| wondering if its because you're in the habit (or wanting to
| be in the habit) for some technical thing you do like working
| on a database that needs years in that format, or if there's
| some reason you feel that its better to write them that way
| in prose?
| mandmandam wrote:
| It's a Long Now Foundation concept [0]. The idea is to
| encourage people to think on a more civilizational time
| scale, and avoid another 'millenium bug' problem in ~7095
| years.
|
| 0 - https://longnow.org/about/
| swores wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the explanation.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I am relieved that when archaeologists download HN
| archives 7095 years from now, they won't be confused
| about which "1965" we were discussing!
|
| https://xkcd.com/1683/
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A somewhat frequently raised question:
|
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true
| &que...>
|
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true
| &que...>
| lynguist wrote:
| If you dig into this person's posting history and also if
| you read regularly on HN for a couple years you will notice
| that it is actually this very user that deliberately uses
| the 0 prefixed 5 digit year numbers, and also goes out of
| their way to include year numbers into their posts to make
| people ask this question.
| valianteffort wrote:
| The 1 JPY coin and (all?) USD bills are 1 gram exactly
| pavlov wrote:
| Dollar bills are secretly weighted in metric units? Evidence of
| the Illuminati world government, surely.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The conspiracy is far more vast than you imagine!
|
| Every single customary unit is secretly defined according to
| the metric system!
| int_19h wrote:
| Soviet coins were specifically designed with this in mind:
|
| 1 kopeck - 1g
|
| 2 kopecks - 2g
|
| 3 kopecks - 3g
|
| 5 kopecks - 5g
|
| (They didn't keep it proportional for 10+ probably because 5g
| is already a fairly hefty coin.)
| HPsquared wrote:
| British coin values are also proportional to weight, within the
| groupings that can be put together in the little coin bags.
|
| 2p weighs twice as much as 1p.
|
| 10p weighs twice as much as 5p.
|
| 50p weighs 2.5x as much as 20p.
|
| PS2 weighs twice as much as PS1.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 20p is particularly convenient, at exactly 5g.
| swores wrote:
| I think you've misremembered a couple of them (or coins have
| changed since you learned those facts).
|
| In this link is a table of the current weight of UK coins,
| including the ratio between each coin and the coin below it:
| https://chatgpt.com/share/67151004-3fd0-800c-b534-b5933a7305...
|
| Confirmed with sources like
| https://thecoinexpert.co.uk/blog/what-do-uk-coins-weigh/ and
| https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-...
|
| 2p does weigh double 1p
|
| 10p does weigh double 5p
|
| But 50p weighs 1.6x 20p
|
| and PS2 weighs 1.37x PS1
| HPsquared wrote:
| Huh, you are right. I must have seen the first two pairings
| (1p/2p and 5p/10p) and extrapolated.
| 0points wrote:
| Yep. 1 SEK coin is 7 grams to the dot ;-)
| ojhughes wrote:
| Weed dealers would commonly use a 1p coin to weigh an 1/8 oz of
| hash
| rwmj wrote:
| Google tells me a 1p coin weighs 0.1257 oz, so nearly exactly
| 1/8 oz.
|
| I knew someone who got caught by the metropolitan police with a
| fairly ordinary amount of weed (which probably wouldn't have
| attracted anything more than a warning), but also with a set of
| weights. I think he got a suspended sentence in the end. Using
| coins and something innocuous which could be used as a balance
| would seem to make sense.
| masfuerte wrote:
| This has always puzzled me. Why would you make a coin that is
| very nearly, but not quite, 1/8 oz? It's not a nice round
| metric weight either.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Metric only has an advantage for precision measurements
| that have to be operated on arbitrarily, not for dividing
| things. You're usually dividing things in halves, far less
| often into thirds and even more rarely into fifths. 1/8 oz
| is an ounce that has been divided in half three times. Or
| you can think of it as a pound that has been divided in
| half seven times.
| masfuerte wrote:
| I understand why they might have chosen 1/8 oz. I don't
| understand why they chose not quite 1/8 oz. That's the
| puzzle.
| modulovalue wrote:
| I'm using euro cents as weights in my weighted vest.
|
| When I started doing this I didn't want to afford dedicated
| weights as it seemed like a waste of money, but I had many cents
| saved up from my childhood, which I started to use instead.
|
| I have roughly 15kg in euro cents in my vest and I'm regularly
| talking walks with it.
|
| To get one kilo you need 435 cents and it turns out that in
| Germany you can also "buy" coins "for free" at the "Bundesbank",
| that is, you can exchange actual money for weights without any
| fees. You give 4 euros and 35 cents and you get a kilo. Once you
| need the money back, you can also sell those coins back to them
| for free.
| rwmj wrote:
| What's a weighted vest? Something for diving?
| dmd wrote:
| It's a way to increase the risk of injury to your knees and
| ankles and strain your back and shoulders while taking walks,
| and in general make walking more unpleasant.
|
| Some people think it's an exercise 'life hack'.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Is it worse than carrying a backpack?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I went 0' 5' 10' 15, 20kg over 3 years after an embolism.
| N=1 (rather like yourself: or you spoke to/ read about
| people that don't quite understand 'pacing'. Do you/ them
| struggle with 1 bag of shopping? I make three or more
| light(er)trips.
| t-3 wrote:
| The risk of injury while walking in a weighted vest is not
| much higher than walking normally. A very high weight of
| vest is probably ill advised, but walking on a very
| flat/regular surface for long periods is far more damaging
| than walking with a little extra weight. Weighted
| bracelets/limb weights _are_ dangerous though, and shouldn
| 't be used unless you know what you're doing and take care
| not to move too quickly and put excess strain on joints.
| dotancohen wrote:
| How much weight on a weighted arm band is considered
| dangerous? I'm considering 500 gram bands for my arms,
| that's just about twice the weight of a cellular phone
| today.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Ehh, I've been doing fitness boxing and knockout home
| fitness (Nintendo switch) with 1.5 kg wrist/hand weights
| for ages now, no issues to speak off. I think he's taking
| about the 2-5kg weights, these are _way_ more dangerous
| then you 'd expect from wearing them. (I did that for a
| while, after getting slightly In shape - at least until I
| read up on it)
|
| Strong recommendation for Nintendo switch for baseline
| fitness btw, these games are great for a 1-2 day 20
| minutes workout/week for unfit office workers. Way better
| experience then the equivalent VR games.
| archi42 wrote:
| What are the equivalent VR games? Just curious.
|
| I don't play too much VR these days, but enjoyed Beat
| Saber for "stationary movement", Gorn for beating up
| stuff and the VR ports of the original Serious Sam games
| for "run and shoot like a maniac".
| t-3 wrote:
| It depends on what you're doing, but 500g shouldn't be
| dangerous as long as you wear the weights tightly bound
| so they don't bounce or slide. What you want to watch out
| for are anything that overextends or puts pressure on the
| joints - those movements can cause damage even unweighted
| and having weights just makes the danger worse.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I'd be worried about blisters/rashes/rubbing if the
| weights slide around. I use an exercise-bike like device
| and realised I was getting a blister on my hands from the
| constant motion of the grip.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thank you.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| If you're injuring yourself by walking around with a few
| extra kilos then you are so, so hilariously out of shape
| that any advice you can give is competely disregardable.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Some people have no, zero, none understanding of sensible
| limits. "If X is good then more X must be better" applied
| to one or more aspects of their life. Hence protein in
| their diet, vitamin supplements, weight in a vest, and of
| course, infamously, having a presence on social media.
| swarnie wrote:
| Used in running to add extra resistance.
|
| I've used them on and off in the past; useful in limited
| circumstances.
| modulovalue wrote:
| It's a vest that you can fill with stuff to increase the
| intensity of a workout.
|
| There was a time in my life when my legs started hurting and
| shaking from muscle atrophy because I was programming too
| much and moving too little.
|
| I was looking for a way to fix that issue and I didn't want
| to waste time going to a gym, so I started talking walks with
| a weighted vest. Walking is nice because you can think while
| walking and with a weighted vest you don't have to walk for
| hours for it to have a useful effect on your body.
| xandrius wrote:
| For information, the current research shows that the
| intensity of the exercise is much less important than the
| duration. So if you did so little exercise that you get
| muscle atrophy, a weighted vest isn't going to do much for
| you.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| > For information, the current research shows that the
| intensity of the exercise is much less important than the
| duration
|
| For what goal? Increasing strength? I have my doubts.
| uoaei wrote:
| They're probably referring to some contrived fitness
| study on hypertrophy.
| vidarh wrote:
| Anyone who has actually done both low-intensity exercise,
| e.g. walking, and high-intensity, e.g. heavy compound
| lifts, will tell you that statement needs a lot of
| additional caveats.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| You're gonna need to provide a source to that. For
| caloric burning? Sure, I'd agree. For cardiovascular
| health? Eh, the answer lies in the middle. For strength
| and muscle building? No, quite the opposite really. At
| some point the intensity of an exercise is so low it
| provides no meaningful muscle stimulus.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| FYI going to the gym is hardly a waste of time. You feel
| refreshed and your body will thank you after a while.
| lupire wrote:
| Working out without the commute saves time.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| The decathlon weight 500g pakets of sand)jacket is about EUR20.
| How easy is it to make your jacket 10kg? Are the coins easily
| removable? Do you have straps to keep the weight 'tight'?
| modulovalue wrote:
| It's very easy. I'm using the cheapest weighted vest that I
| could find and it came with blue bags that I've just filled
| with coins. You don't really need straps to make the weights
| tight because the money just kind of spreads inside of the
| bag and doesn't move at all once it's there.
|
| It's on my todo list to 3d print some containers to replace
| the bags with actual "money rolls" so that I can remove them
| more easily.
| swores wrote:
| Maybe you've already considered and decided paper wouldn't
| work, or maybe you want the fun of working with a 3D
| printer, but my initial thought:
|
| Would it not be simple to create rolls of coins by simply
| wrapping a sheet of paper round a stack of them, once or
| twice around, a little bit of sellotape to hold the paper
| in place, including folding it over at both ends and taping
| there too? I'd imagine an A4 sheet would be more than
| enough for each stack of coins, cutting off what isn't
| needed, and since you wouldn't care about them being
| beautiful you wouldn't even need fresh paper and could just
| use paper that would otherwise go into recycling/trash
| (letters received, junk mail, etc.)
|
| edit: I did a quick search which both confirmed people have
| made coin rolls using simple paper, and also that it's
| highly likely banks will offer pre-made paper holders for
| the various coin sizes that you can just ask for and get
| for free (with the bank assuming you'll be bringing them
| back full of coins - you could either ask for as many as
| you need, or just one per size and use it as a template for
| making more from plain paper like this guy does:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsOkp_WPxY )
| modulovalue wrote:
| That's a very good point. I wonder about the durability
| of a paper based solution, but 3d printed rolls might
| also be suboptimal in that regard. This needs some
| experimentation.
| swores wrote:
| I'd imagine that if paper alone wasn't strong enough for
| long term use, using sellotape to cover the entire roll
| such that the whole thing has a layer of tape on top of
| the layer of paper would make them pretty durable and add
| very little time and cost to it. (But I've not done
| anything like this, so my guessing could be bullshit -
| happy experimenting!)
| xandrius wrote:
| I'd honestly just use some ziplock bags and call it a
| day.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Could you explain more? I do not understand how you can buy
| coins for free by paying coins for "weights" (what are these
| weights? What are they made from?). Also, what is the use for
| this? To check of your coins are real? Calibrate your coin
| scale?
| thfuran wrote:
| You give bills and get pennies.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| The coins are weights, the actual money is paper or
| electronic money.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| How do you pay 35 cent in paper is still a mystery. But OP
| just means you can exchange/buy coins (and use them as
| weights)?
| brianshaler wrote:
| You should be just as mystified about the 4EUR component.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Excuse the nerdy nitpick, I get the point but technically
| as far as "actual" money goes that's the coins. Electronic
| entries in bank ledgers are not legal tender.
|
| One can of course go further and question if banknotes and
| coins should be called actually money. Today the nominal
| value is completely disconnected from what the metal is
| really worth, it's not like with gold coins back in the
| day. And once collective belief in the value is lost fiat
| money quickly becomes worthless. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are
| recent examples.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Have to correct your nitpick. What you're talking about
| is currency not money. Not being legal tender doesn't
| mean it's not money. The majority of money sits as
| electronic entries in each country's central bank. https:
| //www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency.asp#:~:text=Th...
| .
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I guess OP means you don't need to buy above or sell below
| its value when "buying" or "selling" a metric shitton of
| small coins (like you would for gold for instance).
|
| 15 kilograms sounds excessive though, I bet the bank clerks
| hate that trick ;)
| thfuran wrote:
| Banks usually stock pre-counted rolls of coins, and it's
| not much hassle to count out several of those. Though I
| guess 15 kg is probably going to be several dozen.
| dangerwill wrote:
| I have to ask, how do you not sound like ~6500 coins jingling
| together as you walk? I notice when I have like 10 coins in a
| backpack. Do you wrap bundles of coins in cellophane or
| something?
| kqr wrote:
| I remember back when I used physical coins, banks used to
| wrap them in paper rolls with known quantities in them. So
| you could get a $10 roll of ten $1 coins or whatever.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| You can also go to the beach and get unlimited amounts of
| weight for free too. That's what's most budget weights are made
| of
| krick wrote:
| I don't mean to argue that it's just gimmick and any sane
| person would just use sand, but to be completely fair, sand
| is much less dense than steel, so if the coins pack well it
| does make a better weight.
|
| I do also suspect that there must be some product that must
| be more cost effective than coins but denser than sand, but
| cannot think of it right away. I mean, scrap steel is a
| couple of cents per kg.
| Ao7bei3s wrote:
| Olympic weight plates for barbells. They're widely used, so
| competition has brought the cost down, and they're easily
| available in useful increments. I currently see 4x 10lbs
| for <$50 on Amazon. That works out to 2,53 Euro per kg. So
| cheaper than euro cents. They may not have the exact shape
| you need.
|
| The scrap steel probably didn't cost cents per kg when it
| was sold for its original purpose. You are paying for a
| useful shape.
|
| A professional equivalent of weighted vests are ballistic
| plate carriers. Real ballistic plates can be fragile and
| expensive, so options for exercising in (or milsim games in
| airsoft etc.) include expired (and failed to re-certify)
| real ballistic plates, made for purpose training plates...
| or plate shaped sandbags!
| another-dave wrote:
| > That works out to 2,53 Euro per kg. So cheaper than
| euro cents.
|
| The cents are free though, cause they're legal tender --
| just deposit them instead of having to sell 2nd hand
| wging wrote:
| The cheapest plates can be higher variance than you might
| expect. I've seen reports of 45s that are 10% light.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's a lot easier to contain coins vs sand, though.
| omio wrote:
| Just FYI this is illegal in many areas.
| timeon wrote:
| > saved up from my childhood
|
| Isn't Euro just from 2002? That surely is not _that_ long time
| ago!
| ttymck wrote:
| It's 22 years ago, roughly
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > you can also "buy" coins "for free"
|
| Free till you count inflation and opportunity cost. (What you
| could gian as interest with some other investment)
|
| But yeah, probably still cheaper than some product from a
| store.
| shrubble wrote:
| For the USA, an unworn 5 cent nickel weighs 5 grams. When I was
| testing one of those tiny portable scales that are battery
| operated, I would use 1, 2, and 3 nickels to determine if it was
| close to being accurate.
| samatman wrote:
| Indeed. Calibrating scales with nickels is a well-known trick
| in certain circles, including, but not limited to, organic
| chemistry labs. It won't do for analytic weighing, but for
| sanity-checking a scale before weighing out reagents, it does
| the trick.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Ah, good! A few years ago, I picked up a "pocket scale" in a
| legit head shop. I had intended to weigh out doses of Kratom
| powder I'd picked up there, too. (The Kratom turned out to be
| nasty stuff, but the scale works fine, even for weighing postal
| mail.)
|
| I was considering picking up some accurate weights for
| calibrating the scale properly, but if nickels will work, I
| could probably figure out how to procure some nickels instead.
| Right now, I have a roll of quarters and zero nickels in the
| house. I was using one to open up my electric candles, but it
| went missing, so I'm using a dime instead.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >The smallest possible combinations summing to n * 0.5 g are:
|
| It left out 7.5g (it mentioned it above though). I guess if the
| definition of "combination" requires at least 2 coins then 7.5g
| doesn't count.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I think it's worth noting the currency term 'peso' for the money
| used in a lot of former spanish colonies, directly translated,
| means 'weight'. For example there's a famous mexican singer of
| recent who goes by 'peso pluma' and it means featherweight, like
| the boxing classification, not as much to do with money
| georgecmu wrote:
| Soviet coins (at least post 1961) were designed explicitly with
| this application in mind.
|
| 1, 2, 3, and 5 kopeck coins weighed their value in grams. They
| could also be used to estimate lengths; 1 kopeck was 15 mm in
| diameter and 5 kopeck was 25 mm.
| jmclnx wrote:
| The US Nickle (5 Cents) ways 5 grams. I personally think that wad
| done on purpose as a tentative step to move to the metric system.
| samatman wrote:
| The US uses the metric system, just with very non-standard
| units. All of the fundamental customary units are defined
| precisely in SI terms.
|
| The precise five gram weight of the nickel was deliberate, but
| dates to the Civil War, a time when the US had no intention at
| all of moving to the metric system. It's rumored that a gram or
| two of weight was added to the coin on the premise that "five
| cents five grams" was a nice round number, but actually due to
| lobbying by moneyed interests who owned a nickel mine, so they
| could sell more nickel to the government.
| garikz wrote:
| Would be great to see this table extended also for the case when
| you put coins on the other side of the balance, i.e. subtracting
| the coins' weights
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I was thinking, since the post mentions not being able to get
| exactly 10g. But you can get 15g/25g exactly, so you're at 10g
| net by putting them on either side of the scale.
| consp wrote:
| Anecdote from the days switching to the Euro with respect to
| weights: When I was working at a restaurant with high thoughput
| at the end of the '90s and early '00 we first had a giant coin
| sorting machine. That thing was innacurate (hello Egyptian coins
| of same sizes as ours) due to only measuring size and being not
| that accurate. Bank notes were counted by hand.
|
| After the introduction of the Euro, all coins were counted in
| standard sized cups which also fit in the cashiers trays so no
| swapping needed, the error rate reduced to near zero (at
| counting, difference between amount on bag and what the bank told
| us was in it). Also, the machine was 500 grams instead of half a
| small room.
|
| The same was applied to bank notes, as they also have a standard
| weight due to standerdized size and production method. This
| reduced the error rate even further as counting is difficult as
| it turns out if you want to do it at scale. It also made the task
| way faster. Theoretically the machine could count the notes in
| one go, but it mostly reported "error check notes" messages if
| you did that. Things like thick tape (for repair when the bank
| note was damaged) was enough to throw it off in some cases.
|
| Those were interesting times, with people buying a 25ct item with
| a 250 note to not go to the bank to exchange old for new
| currency. (Fyi, you do not have to legally accept that as the due
| dilligence needed with high notes would outweigh the cost of the
| item).
|
| Other anecdote: Also a lot of 50 euro fake notes showed up within
| months after introduction, easilly cought as they lit up like a
| freshly washed white shirt under UV light.
| zczc wrote:
| Soviet copper kopecks coins (1, 2, 3, 5) weighed their exact
| nominal value in grams
| sksxihve wrote:
| Big Ben uses a stack of pennies to keep it accurate
| nikanj wrote:
| Using coins as precision weights was used in Jules Verne's Off on
| a Comet, published in 1877
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Whilst exploring what _money_ is, I had the realisation that
| almost all units of currency are either measures of _weight_
| (pound, livre, peso, shekel, penny), divisions of same (denarius,
| quarter), of _quality_ or its representation (real, crown,
| dollar, florin. zloty, yen, yuan), or are _descriptive of the
| state_ in which they 're used (bolivar, afgani, euro), though
| that last is arguably a form of the second.
|
| That is, traditional specie coin currency is standardised for
| _quantity_ and _quality_ , or at least is initially. Most states
| have found a need to devalue specie coin, and virtually any state
| with a sufficiently advanced financial system and institutional
| trust either settles on a fiat currency or adopts another
| country's fiat currency as its own standard. kragen is making a
| similar point here:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41895405>.
|
| For the latter, see the U.S. dollar which is either _the_ or _an_
| officially accepted currency: Turks and Caicos and British Virgin
| Islands (both British overseas territories); Bonaire, Sint
| Eustatius, and Saba (all Dutch municipalities); the independent
| states of Ecuador, El Salvador, Timor-Leste, Federated States of
| Micronesia, Republic of Palau, and the Marshall Islands; and
| quasi-official or widespread use in the Bahamas, Barbados,
| Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bermuda, Myanmar, Cambodia, Cayman
| Islands, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia, and Zimbabwe.
|
| I've developed the view that _seignorage_ , that is, the exchange
| value in excess of specie value of coinage, is effectively a
| _measure of trust_ in a currency system, and that fiat currency
| in paper or even more so as ledger entries (written or
| electronic) express an _extraordinary_ level of trust in a
| currency, the more so if that currency is widely accepted
| internationally.
|
| Another interpretation is that _money in a given economic region
| is the most widely accepted commodity_ , that is to say, the
| exchange medium which is accepted preferentially to any other.
| This need not be a conventional currency (e.g., commodity or
| symbolic exchange of shells, hides, cattle, cigarettes, alcohol,
| laundry detergent, etc.), or the _official_ currency of a region
| (though legal sanction and sanction of discharge of debt go a
| long way to establishing a currency within a given region).
| Multiple currencies may trade simultaneously, possibly in
| slightly differing contexts, and through much of history there
| has been at least some distinction between retail trade (often
| copper), wholesale (silver), and capital / government financing
| (gold). Adam Smith discusses this at great length in _Wealth of
| Nations_. Multi-metallic systems often involve variable exchange
| rates between different classes of money, and I 've mused that
| this might be something worth reintroducing to modern financial
| systems.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Maybe this was so obvious the author did not write it down, but
| you can also use this to measure accurately weight of objects
| below 10 g.
|
| First you make the stacks for 15.0, 15.5, .. 17.5, 18.0.
| Preferrably using tiny amounts of superglue.
|
| Then you put one stack on one side of the scales, and the other
| stack on the other side, and you have accurate weights for 0.5,
| 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0.
|
| You can make some of these combinations more efficiently, but the
| more coins you use in total, the better accuracy you get as
| manufacturing variations average out (up to a certain point of
| course).
|
| It is a bit more cumbersome to make a quarter gram, but you can
| make one stack of {5x 0.01, 2x 0.02, 1x 0.1, 1x 0.2} for a weight
| of 27.46 g, and one stack of {2x 0.02, 3x 0.05, 1x 0.01, 1x 0.2,}
| giving 27.72 g, for a difference of 0.26 g.
|
| As others have mentioned, using Lego is a nice way to make high
| precision scales. Take a 1x16 Lego Technic brick with holes and
| balance it on a thick needle through the middle hole. Needle
| support can be built from other bricks. Use thin sewing thread
| and some bricks to hang some 6x8 plates from each end.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Or you can buy from China a scale with 0.01g precision for next
| to nothing.
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