Generational Gap

Like many people I suppose, I collect my change in a small jar and then turn it into the bank when the jar is full.  My change comes from various sources, from change from the store to creative discipline methods that I have come up with as a parent.  One thing I don’t do though is pennies.  They are not worth my time but they are worth my son’s time and he readily accepts all the pennies that we give to him.

He asked me over the weekend if we could go to the bank soon as his jar of pennies was nearly full.  Actually he put it this way, “I have a ton of pennies.”  Now, other than necessitating the obligatory “I have told you a million times not to exaggerate” his words got me to thinking.  How much money would you have if you actually did have a ton of pennies?

We are fortunate to live in a day when answers to these types of questions are easy enough to find but even when I was his age I could have figured it out.  I did collect coins and my coin books typically had the dimensions and weights of most American coins.  From there is is only a matter of math.  Since I no longer have my coin books, I headed to the US Mint web site and then to circulating coins section and then finally the page dedicated to the Penny.  Boom, there at the bottom of the page was my answer.  The currently minted penny is 2.5 grams in weight.  From here it was straight conversions and then I could find my answer.  There was a slight problem though in that the makeup of the currently minted penny was different prior to the year 1982 and then different still prior to the year 1962.  The weight difference was not that much (0.2 grams to 0.6 grams) but still it would throw off my numbers.  Now I had a dilemma.  Do I do some research (say like determining the current percentage of distribution in normal circulation of coins that were of the differing weights) or change the parameters of my problem so that instead of wanting to know how many pennies are in a ton I want to know how many pennies minted since 1982 are in a ton?  I decided on the latter (though I may go back and solve the former later on).

28.35 grams	1 ounce	11.34 pennies per ounce
16 ounces	1 pound	181.44 pennies per pound
2,000 pounds	1 ton	362,880 pennies per ton

So, if you have a ton of pennies then you have $3,628.80 if all of the pennies were minted since 1982.  Of course this assumes no wear and tear on the pennies (making them lighter) or dirt or grime (making them heavier).  At any rate I had my answer.

This morning I was telling my son what his phrase had led me to do and then gave him the challenge of calculating how many pennies were in a ton.  He followed a slightly different path and simple googled “how many pennies in a ton” and the first web site in the list gave him a number close enough to satisfy his curiosity.  I tried to explain how I calculated my (better, more accurate) answer but he just had this look on his face that said, “who cares, this is close enough.”

Sigh

Jon