BAN #62: A ton of money

Subscribers math: The BA Newsletter costs just 40.5 grams of dollar coins a month. But that’s only 5 grams of dollar bills a month.

Random thoughts

Stuff I think about in the shower, typically, and which may one day make it to the blog. Until then…

I was thinking about finances recently, and how much various things we needed around the house cost. I don’t remember what I was going over specifically, but I do remember at some point thinking, “Wow. That would cost a ton of money!”

And then, being the nerd I am, I stopped right there. Huh, I wondered. How much is a ton of money?

Well, it depends on the money! Let’s do the math. I use metric, so let’s go with a metric ton, or 1,000 kilograms, which are 1,000 grams each, making a ton a million grams.

The U.S. Mint has a list of how much each coin weighs:

Penny: 2.5 grams

Nickel: 5.0 g

Dime: 2.268 g

Quarter: 5.67 g

Half dollar: 11.34 g

Dollar coin: 8.1 g

OK, cool. Now, to get how many coins are in a ton, just divide 1,000,000 by the mass of a single coin. Then we multiply that by the value of the coin to see what we get for a ton of them:

Pennies: 400,000 per ton = $4,000

Nickels: 200,000 per ton = $10,000

Dimes: 440,917 per ton = $44,091

Quarters: 176,366 per ton = $44,091

Half dollars: 88,183 per ton = $44,092

Dollar coins: 123,456 per ton = $123,456

Interesting! Obviously, the dollar coins net you the most if you have a ton of them. That makes sense; they only weigh a little more than quarters but are worth four times as much per coin. I also chuckled at the value of dimes, quarters, and half dollars: They’re all equal within rounding errors. That’s no coincidence, of course. Coins used to be silver, so their face value depended on their weight. Now they’re a mix of various metals, but the weights have been standardized to the old scale.

OK, that’s great for coins, but what about bank notes (aka bills)? Those weigh approximately one gram each, so a million of them would weigh a ton. Bank notes currently come in seven denominations: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollars.

So clearly the winner here is the Ben Franklin. If you had a ton of $100 bills, you’d have 100 million dollars.

That’s a ton of money!

And it’d be hard to lug around. A ton is a lot. But now I’m wondering how big a pile this would all be. Hmmm. Y’know what? I’ll save that math for later. I think I’ve done enough…

… heavy lifting for one issue.

Et alia

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