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From: barth@tellab1.UUCP (Barth Richards)
Newsgroups: net.bizarre
Subject: re:where do all the pennies go?
Message-ID: <564@tellab1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 18:11:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: tellab1.564
Posted: Wed Sep  4 18:11:15 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 04:17:42 EDT
Reply-To: barth@tellab3.UUCP (Barth Richards)
Organization: Tellabs, Inc., Lisle, IL
Lines: 77
Keywords: pennies, copper

In a recent posting, Jeff Sparkes asked "Where do all the pennies go?"
and also wanted to know how many pennies there are supposed to be floating
around out there. Well, I checked into this and found that from 1793, when
the U.S. government began minting our national coinage, to 1984 the United
States government has minted:

                         212,828,893,364 pennies.

The weight and metalic composition of pennies has changed several times over 
the last 190 years or so, ranging from 13.48 gm of copper per penny in 1793 to
0.06 gm at present.

Since 1981, the U.S. government has minted some 44 billion pennies, but almost
all of these were the new "plated zinc" variety. In other words, the pennies
are stamped on zinc planchets, and then electroplated with just enough copper
to make them look like they are solid copper pennies, so the amount of copper
used is negligable. (It does, however, mean that they used an awfull lot of
zinc...but that's another matter.)

Anyway, the total amount of copper used to mint those 212,828,893,364 pennies
is staggering indeed:


         1,123,857 metric tons (metric ton = 2204.6 pounds)
		       
               166 kilograms (kilogram = 2.2046 pounds)

	       468 grams (gram = .035 ounce [28.57 grams = 1 ounce
	                 <that's an avoirdupois ounce, not troy>])

             680.5 miligrams (28,570 miligrams = 1 ounce)

The above figures, of course, do not take into account the fact that many other
countries, most notably Canada and Great Britian, have been making pennies for
a long time as well. Hell, England's been making pennies since King Arthur
stopped breast feeding (age 37) and the word turd was invented (Anglo-Saxon
"tord," circa 500 A.D.).

I've got 12 cents in pennies in my pocket. I don't know how much the rest of
you have, but I'm pretty sure it's not $2,128,288,933.52.

Needless to say, there's certianly an astounding number of pennies to be
accounted for, and a vast amount of copper. Any theories?


                                      Barth Richards
				      Corporate Communications
				      Tellabs, Lisle, IL

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