School Project

i have to create 4 coins for my imaginary country for chemistry. they each have to be a diffrent composition of elements and alloys, and we have to say why we chose them and how much it would cost to make a coin. so far i have:

Monopence- shape:round material : bronze ?

Pentapence- shape: pentagon Material : Zinc

Decapence shape: Decagon? not too sure. Material : CuNi

1/4 Crown (25 pence) shape- round Material- Sterling Silver or stainless steel

any suggestions on a compound to use? i have until may 13th but i want to get everything down so i can make this the best project my teacher has ever seen

any suggestions would be appreciated
-Mark

 

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I'll get you some information when I have more time. For right now, here are a couple bits of data for you:

There is a reason that most coins in the World are round. They are easier to manufacture. You can make a round hole for the coin to fit into quite easily. It is far more difficult to drill a multi-sided hole.

Look into the compositions used by the USA and other countries. There are precious metals like gold & silver. There are modern alloys like copper-nickel, copper coated zinc, sandwich clad (also copper-nickel). Also you could check into the bi-metal coins (coins made from two different alloys which are pressed together like a doughnut & a donut-hole). These bi-metal coins are desirable for anti-counterfeiting & because they are more expensive to melt down because they require additional refining to separate the parts.

Will your coins be based upon base 10 or base 12 counting system? You can divide 12 by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 for fractional coins. In base 10 you can only divide by 1, 2, and 5 for fractional pieces.

I'll try to get back to you soon.

 

If it were me,and since it's Chemistry one of the higher denominations would be billon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billon

 

I just had a devious thought. The cost of making the blanks & coining the money is an expense that you can eliminate for your fledgling country. All you really need to do is buy coinage (from say the USA) and countermark it for use as legal tender in your new country.

Depending upon the currency exchange rate and the countermark you make, you could make a lot of money instead of having the costs associated with minting your own coins.

Only kidding of course.

 

Manganese steel would be a good material. virtually indestructable in all ways.

 

i was thinking that too

 

The problem you will face in cost is the cost of making your coins/dies will be higher due the the hardness of your maganese steel and stainless would be early die fatigue and poorly struck coins. If you have to take that into account.

 

Why not try one of the denominations in Aluminum.

 

i was thinking that too mat
and koinjester that has no effect on the project but thanks for the tip, i will probably shy away from manganese and steel,
so the question remains what about tin?

 

Cobalt would be interesting, if its a metal that can be used as a coin....

 

during class we had a sub and i literally stared at my periodic table for 7 min straight looking and comparing metals and making compounds in my head

 

Please don't try this at home

If you are looking for an interesting metal how about using Sodium? Sodium is a soft metal. It may not last long in our everyday environment but it would be a blast if someone were to go swimming with the coin in their pocket.

Here is a link describing some coin chemistry that affects the look of normal US cents.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1262456/make_a_gold_penny/

Practically speaking, you should probably stick to soft conventional metals because they would be easier to mint. Aluminum, Aluminum-Bronze, Copper, Gold, Electrum, and Silver come to mind. Nickel and some of it's alloys can be very hard. Plastic with a metal or lacquer coating might be interesting.

P.S.
Be careful if you use Uranium. The coins would be very heavy & one extra coin in the roll could create a critical mass.

 

Hello again Mark,

One of the major contributing factors to the cost of making your coin is going to be how much of your selected material goes into the planchet. When you select a planchet shape, you will need to calculate the volume of that shape. If you select some odd geometric shape and need some help calculating the volume or weight, then there are several people here that could probably assist you.

 

i am just going to use the idea of making them all round, and then maybe having a diffrent shape in the middle of each coin

 

Are you going to be melting down the metals to form alloys? or are you going to electro plate some of them so you get plating.