But a copper would have been a better choice. Zinc will corrode and crumble if used in a stressful application.
Yup, and plenty of fires doubtless resulted. Sudden flashback to my childhood home, with two-prong outlets throughout, and a fuse box (not breakers) in the basement. I was too young to remember shopping for replacement fuses, though; were they right next to the vacuum-tube tester cabinet?
I thought they were joking about the missing part of the cent (.8 cents), but it looks like bulk washers end up around 8 cents apiece on Amazon...? You'd still come out ahead using a nickel as a washer at this point. Soon it'll be dimes.
Heck, silver coins were more often used as well. I have a few silver barber dimes and quarters my father retrieved from old fuse boxes, as well as lots of mercury and roosevelt dimes and washington quarters. Yeah, bronze is a pretty good conductor, but stick a silver dime in there and your lights were brighter. Fuse box less safe, but lights brighter.
Oh, the fuse box would be safer with silver than bronze. It's just everything connected to it that's less protected.
There was hey time when people would use half cents and large cents as roofing washers because the washers themselves cost more.
Fair enough, I should have said your wires in your walls might heat up, but your lights definitely worked better.
Yeah, Archie Bunker did that and caused a fire in his house. The insurance adjuster I think figured it out. So Archie got nothing. Wow, I remember seeing that when I was like 7 or 8 years old. A show my parents used to watch.
Coins have been used for many many unintended purposes for a very long time. The strangest use I've ever had myself was suspending a zincoln into a tablespoon of vinegar from a balance scale until it was light enough to lift out leaving a measured dose of zinc. It was either spend two minutes setting it up or run out to the drugstore late at night. Zinc cents are highly toxic and poisonous to babies but we all need a tiny little amount. One cent can kill a baby.
I'm not sure how much I trust the Mint's zinc supplier to keep cadmium and lead levels under control. For a single shot, though, it's probably not a big deal.
