Two Quarters or Five Dimes – Type A

It is no secret that boys tend to have a lot of stuff in their pockets. Nearly anything can be found in the pocket of a boy: from a cool rock that is found at the end of the driveway, to a pocket knife, to a favorite baseball card, to bunch of dirt for a dandelion seed experiment. As boys grow up, they tend to put less things in their pockets, or at least to be more particular about what it is that they place in there. As an adult, it may simply be a wallet, keys and coins. Still, those pockets can sometimes get full or heavy. Some men clip their keys to their belt loop, although I have never been able to convince myself that that is really something that I want to do. One thing that I will do, however, is coin management. No, this is not something that I plan on and do everyday, but it is something that crosses my mind as a way to be efficient as I use my currency. Quite simply, this means that I try to not keep any more coins in my pocket than I might actually need. On top of that, one should first use the coins that weigh the most and have the least value. One example of this is to never have more than 4 pennies in my pocket at one time. One should always be able to add pennies to the amount paid so that change received plus change in pocket will never include more than 4 pennies. Another easy example of this, when at a vending machine, one should use two nickels before using one dime. The impetus for this post, and my conundrum came the other day when I wanted something in a vending machine that cost sixty cents. The first ten was simple; I used the two nickels I had. Now I needed fifty cents more, and what I had in my pocket was five dimes and two quarters. I could not convince myself which would weigh less in my pocket. I ended up using the five dimes. It turns out, it is really a flip of the coin. A quarter weighs 5.67g or 0.2268g/cent. A dime weighs 2.268g, also 0.2268g/cent. I guess that weight to value ratio probably originated from when they were both made out of the same solid material. I guess that makes cents (ha ha!).