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Using Euro coins as weights (2004)
- RadiozRadioz 2y agoWater is also a convenient and accurate measure of weight if you know its volume.
- diggan 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoNeat. 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 2y agoVery useful information, I used it around that time period with a lego balance scale to measure weights of various drugs in high school.
- rchowe 2y agoI 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 2y agoWhat about wear ? Were they only new coins ?
- Retric 2y agoI’ve never seen significant ware on a coin in circulation. Have you?
- seqizz 2y agoI've seen enough wear to prevent them to be calibration material at least.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MadnessASAP 2y agoDepends 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI have coins that originally had milled edges that are now completely smooth.
- fanf2 2y agoOnly on counterfeit £1 coins, before the coins were redesigned to make them harder to fake
- nathell 2y agoEuro coins circulating in various countries of the Eurozone have different obverses – I wonder whether that affects weight?
- simonjgreen 2y agoI 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 2y agoAny 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 2y agoStriking/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 2y agoYes, 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 https://youtu.be/nBuSmbcp1AE (seems to only have German subtitles, but they are quite visual)
- Someone 2y agoProbably 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.
- kd5bjo 2y agoAt 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 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_United_States_dollar#Coins_in_circulation 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 2y agoNickel is ~5 grams. Dollar bill is ~1 gram.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI like how easy it is to remember nickel == 5 g.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoThe "ten US nickles is always 50g" mantra has helped me detect several defective scales (whether intentional or not, I want accuracy).
- dredmorbius 2y agoNote 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/nickel> <https://www.etymonline.com/word/penny https://www.etymonline.com/word/penny>
- valianteffort 2y agoThe 1 JPY coin and (all?) USD bills are 1 gram exactly
- pavlov 2y agoDollar bills are secretly weighted in metric units? Evidence of the Illuminati world government, surely.
- Kon-Peki 2y agoThe conspiracy is far more vast than you imagine! Every single customary unit is secretly defined according to the metric system!
- int_19h 2y agoSoviet 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 2y agoBritish 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. £2 weighs twice as much as £1.
- Symbiote 2y ago20p is particularly convenient, at exactly 5g.
- HPsquared 2y agoSame weight as 1 sheet of 80gsm A4 paper! (A4 sheet area is 1/16 of a square metre)
- swores 2y agoI 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-b5933a730568 https://chatgpt.com/share/67151004-3fd0-800c-b534-b5933a7305... Confirmed with sources like https://thecoinexpert.co.uk/blog/what-do-uk-coins-weigh/ https://thecoinexpert.co.uk/blog/what-do-uk-coins-weigh/ and https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications/ 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 £2 weighs 1.37x £1
- HPsquared 2y agoHuh, you are right. I must have seen the first two pairings (1p/2p and 5p/10p) and extrapolated.
- 0points 2y agoYep. 1 SEK coin is 7 grams to the dot ;-)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ojhughes 2y agoWeed dealers would commonly use a 1p coin to weigh an 1/8 oz of hash
- rwmj 2y agoGoogle 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 2y agoThis 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 2y agoMetric 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.
- modulovalue 2y agoI'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 2y agoWhat's a weighted vest? Something for diving?
- dmd 2y agoIt'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 2y agoIs it worse than carrying a backpack?
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoI 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 2y agoThe 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.
- shrubble 2y agoFor 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 2y agoIndeed. 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 2y agoAh, 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.
- hoistbypetard 2y agoThat's how I've always calibrated my coffee scales.
- Thorrez 2y ago>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.
- talithatulloch 2y ago[dead]
- jamal-kumar 2y agoI 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
- t-3 2y agoIt could very well be a pun to do with how he gets money, though. Wiki says he makes narco music, and bird references are common to drug slang in both US English and (Mexican) Spanish.
- jamal-kumar 2y agoJuegos de palabras for sure
- georgecmu 2y agoSoviet 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.
- t-3 2y agoThat's a very cool intentionally usefully design. What's the rationale behind a 3-kopeck coin though? I don't think I've seen a '3' denomination in any other currency.
- BoxOfRain 2y agoI think pre-decimal pound sterling coins had a 3p coin, but it makes more sense in that context.
- alistairSH 2y agoKopecks are 100th of a ruble. If they were ever a non-decimal value, it predates the early 20th century.
- georgecmu 2y agoSo I never looked into it closely, but I knew that the 3 and 15 kopeck coins had names of their own of Tatar origin, so it had to have had a long history. According to wikipedia [1,2,3], as a physical coin it was minted periodically throughout Russian history. The Tatar origin of its informal historical name is either 'gold'[4] or 'six'[5]. It was last introduced in 1839-1841 and persisted into Soviet period, until 1991 when it was discontinued by the newly independent Russia. The 1/2/3/5 weight system had to be of the Soviet design, since the metric system was adopted following the Bolshevik revolution, but the weights and dimensions haven't changed since 1926 [6]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruble#Russia's_coins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruble#Russia's_coins [2] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BA%D0%B8 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%BA%D0%B... [3] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD_(%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD... [4] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%B... [5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Coins,_1924%E2%80%931961 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Coins,_1924%E2%80...
- jmclnx 2y agoThe 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 2y agoThe 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.
- troad 2y ago> The US uses the metric system, just with very non-standard units. All of the fundamental customary units are defined precisely in SI terms. "Uses the metric system" = uses standard metric units. By the logic you lay out, the metric system itself doesn't use the metric system, seeing as the units are not defined by reference to SI terms but to natural constants. (And if your definition of the metric system includes both US customary units and natural constants, then your use of the phrase 'metric system' has ceased to signify anything meaningful.)
- samatman 2y ago> the metric system itself doesn't use the metric system Of course the metric system doesn't use the metric system. How would that even work? SI units are, as you point out, defined in terms of measured aspects of reality. US customary units, on the other hand, are defined in terms of the metric system. And yes, this means that both of them are grounded in measured aspects of reality. Again. How else could this possibly work? Measuring themselves, perhaps? If US customary units were defined directly in terms of measurements, then they wouldn't use the metric system. They would only be interconvertible through those measurements, and if they weren't the same measurements, as they easily could not be, this would be an empirical process subject to further experiment and refinement. But they're not. They're defined in terms of SI, making conversion a matter of arithmetic. It's a load-bearing statement. I do understand how someone who lacks grounding in the physical sciences might not realize that. Glad to help.
- garikz 2y agoWould 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoAnecdote 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.
- FerretFred 2y ago> bank notes, as they also have a standard weight due to standerdized size and production method. LOL, I worked for a bank branch located in a low socio-economic area. The pubs and bars would come in on Monday morning with huge wads of bank notes, wet with beer and whiskey, and it all had to be hand-counted as machines couldn't do it. We then had to bundle up excess notes and heat-shrink wrap them. I'm sure there were some pretty interesting bacterial colonies growing in there!
- zczc 2y agoSoviet copper kopecks coins (1, 2, 3, 5) weighed their exact nominal value in grams
- sksxihve 2y agoBig Ben uses a stack of pennies to keep it accurate
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nikanj 2y agoUsing coins as precision weights was used in Jules Verne's Off on a Comet, published in 1877
- EnigmaFlare 2y ago[dead]
- dredmorbius 2y agoWhilst 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 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 2y agoMaybe 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 2y agoOr you can buy from China a scale with 0.01g precision for next to nothing.
- myst 2y agoIIRC the USSR coins weighted their value in grams, so that the cashier can know their value just by weighting them on the scales.
- user2342 2y agoPerhaps a helpful addition: I collected my change money over several years (about 9kg in total, mostly lower valued coins, since the higher values can be spent easily). After exchanging them on a bank into useful money: the average Euro coin weights about 3.6 grams and has an average value of 7 cents. :-)
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoTwo British 1/2pences weighed exactly £8's worth of....