I'm using euro cents as weights in my weighted vest.
When I started doing this I didn't want to afford dedicated weights as it seemed like a waste of money, but I had many cents saved up from my childhood, which I started to use instead.
I have roughly 15kg in euro cents in my vest and I'm regularly talking walks with it.
To get one kilo you need 435 cents and it turns out that in Germany you can also "buy" coins "for free" at the "Bundesbank", that is, you can exchange actual money for weights without any fees. You give 4 euros and 35 cents and you get a kilo. Once you need the money back, you can also sell those coins back to them for free.
I don't mean to argue that it's just gimmick and any sane person would just use sand, but to be completely fair, sand is much less dense than steel, so if the coins pack well it does make a better weight.
I do also suspect that there must be some product that must be more cost effective than coins but denser than sand, but cannot think of it right away. I mean, scrap steel is a couple of cents per kg.
I have to ask, how do you not sound like ~6500 coins jingling together as you walk? I notice when I have like 10 coins in a backpack. Do you wrap bundles of coins in cellophane or something?
I remember back when I used physical coins, banks used to wrap them in paper rolls with known quantities in them. So you could get a $10 roll of ten $1 coins or whatever.
Could you explain more? I do not understand how you can buy coins for free by paying coins for “weights” (what are these weights? What are they made from?). Also, what is the use for this? To check of your coins are real? Calibrate your coin scale?
I guess OP means you don't need to buy above or sell below its value when "buying" or "selling" a metric shitton of small coins (like you would for gold for instance).
15 kilograms sounds excessive though, I bet the bank clerks hate that trick ;)
The decathlon weight 500g pakets of sand)jacket is about €20.
How easy is it to make your jacket 10kg? Are the coins easily removable? Do you have straps to keep the weight 'tight'?
It's very easy. I'm using the cheapest weighted vest that I could find and it came with blue bags that I've just filled with coins. You don't really need straps to make the weights tight because the money just kind of spreads inside of the bag and doesn't move at all once it's there.
It's on my todo list to 3d print some containers to replace the bags with actual "money rolls" so that I can remove them more easily.
It's a vest that you can fill with stuff to increase the intensity of a workout.
There was a time in my life when my legs started hurting and shaking from muscle atrophy because I was programming too much and moving too little.
I was looking for a way to fix that issue and I didn't want to waste time going to a gym, so I started talking walks with a weighted vest. Walking is nice because you can think while walking and with a weighted vest you don't have to walk for hours for it to have a useful effect on your body.
It's a way to increase the risk of injury to your knees and ankles and strain your back and shoulders while taking walks, and in general make walking more unpleasant.
Anecdote from the days switching to the Euro with respect to weights: When I was working at a restaurant with high thoughput at the end of the '90s and early '00 we first had a giant coin sorting machine. That thing was innacurate (hello Egyptian coins of same sizes as ours) due to only measuring size and being not that accurate. Bank notes were counted by hand.
After the introduction of the Euro, all coins were counted in standard sized cups which also fit in the cashiers trays so no swapping needed, the error rate reduced to near zero (at counting, difference between amount on bag and what the bank told us was in it). Also, the machine was 500 grams instead of half a small room.
The same was applied to bank notes, as they also have a standard weight due to standerdized size and production method. This reduced the error rate even further as counting is difficult as it turns out if you want to do it at scale. It also made the task way faster. Theoretically the machine could count the notes in one go, but it mostly reported "error check notes" messages if you did that. Things like thick tape (for repair when the bank note was damaged) was enough to throw it off in some cases.
Those were interesting times, with people buying a 25ct item with a 250 note to not go to the bank to exchange old for new currency. (Fyi, you do not have to legally accept that as the due dilligence needed with high notes would outweigh the cost of the item).
Other anecdote: Also a lot of 50 euro fake notes showed up within months after introduction, easilly cought as they lit up like a freshly washed white shirt under UV light.
> bank notes, as they also have a standard weight due to standerdized size and production method.
LOL, I worked for a bank branch located in a low socio-economic area. The pubs and bars would come in on Monday morning with huge wads of bank notes, wet with beer and whiskey, and it all had to be hand-counted as machines couldn't do it. We then had to bundle up excess notes and heat-shrink wrap them. I'm sure there were some pretty interesting bacterial colonies growing in there!
Soviet coins (at least post 1961) were designed explicitly with this application in mind.
1, 2, 3, and 5 kopeck coins weighed their value in grams. They could also be used to estimate lengths; 1 kopeck was 15 mm in diameter and 5 kopeck was 25 mm.
That's a very cool intentionally usefully design. What's the rationale behind a 3-kopeck coin though? I don't think I've seen a '3' denomination in any other currency.
So I never looked into it closely, but I knew that the 3 and 15 kopeck coins had names of their own of Tatar origin, so it had to have had a long history.
According to wikipedia [1,2,3], as a physical coin it was minted periodically throughout Russian history. The Tatar origin of its informal historical name is either 'gold'[4] or 'six'[5].
It was last introduced in 1839-1841 and persisted into Soviet period, until 1991 when it was discontinued by the newly independent Russia. The 1/2/3/5 weight system had to be of the Soviet design, since the metric system was adopted following the Bolshevik revolution, but the weights and dimensions haven't changed since 1926 [6].
I built a computer vision device that used the top-down area of a penny as a calibration standard. Coins are useful, easy-to-get items that have relatively tight manufacturing tolerances.
Ever since coin clipping got out of hand in the 1700s most coins feature milled edges or edge inscriptions. They make the edges more resistant to wear and make any wear easy to spot.
Of course there's a limit to the precision you can get from coins, but considering the scale of their production and the account of handling they see they are surprisingly good
Our area measurement application did not require that tight a tolerance (we were estimating yield on broken material). If I needed that tight a tolerance, I could have gotten proof coins from the mint, or potentially switched to using a real calibration standard like a gauge block.
At one point, I worked out that US dimes, quarters, and half dollars all weigh $20/lb (iirc), which made the task of counting my accumulated change a lot easier.
That's because that was the price of silver. The mint was for many centuries a way to get your precious metals divided into units of standardized weights that were stamped to certify their authenticity, thus facilitating commerce, though frequently rulers succumbed to the temptation of "debasing" them by diluting the precious metals with so-called "base" (in the sense of "low", "contemptible") metals such as tin, lead, and zinc.
So quarters weren't worth 25¢ because the government said so; they were worth 25¢ because they were made out of 25¢ worth of silver.
That's the same reason "peso" means "weight" and the "shekel" and "pound" take their name from units of weight.
This ended in 01965 in the USA, followed by the end of the gold standard, since which the dollar has lost 96% of its value relative to the precious metals that used to define it. The consensus among economists is that this is a good thing because it prevents deflation. I'm not sure.
Off topic, but may I ask why you use a leading zero when writing the year? (01965 rather than 1965)
You're not the only person I've seen do it on this site, and I can't recall ever seeing it not on this site, so I'm wondering if its because you're in the habit (or wanting to be in the habit) for some technical thing you do like working on a database that needs years in that format, or if there's some reason you feel that its better to write them that way in prose?
Note that the names for the first three coins are all units of subdivision. "Quarter" and "half" most obviously, dime comes from the Latin decima, meaning "one tenth". The equivalent Roman coin was the denarius.
"Nickel" and "penny" break that pattern, with the first referencing the composition of the coin (originally called a "half-dime"), and penny is a measure of weight, varying by locale. The British penny is 1/240 of a Tower pound (later decimalised to 1/100 in the 1960s), whilst an American pennyweight (used for example in reference to nails) is 1/1000th of a pound.
Maybe this was so obvious the author did not write it down, but you can also use this to measure accurately weight of objects below 10 g.
First you make the stacks for 15.0, 15.5, .. 17.5, 18.0. Preferrably using tiny amounts of superglue.
Then you put one stack on one side of the scales, and the other stack on the other side, and you have accurate weights for 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0.
You can make some of these combinations more efficiently, but the more coins you use in total, the better accuracy you get as manufacturing variations average out (up to a certain point of course).
It is a bit more cumbersome to make a quarter gram, but you can make one stack of {5x 0.01, 2x 0.02, 1x 0.1, 1x 0.2} for a weight of 27.46 g, and one stack of {2x 0.02, 3x 0.05, 1x 0.01, 1x 0.2,} giving 27.72 g, for a difference of 0.26 g.
As others have mentioned, using Lego is a nice way to make high precision scales. Take a 1x16 Lego Technic brick with holes and balance it on a thick needle through the middle hole. Needle support can be built from other bricks. Use thin sewing thread and some bricks to hang some 6x8 plates from each end.
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When I started doing this I didn't want to afford dedicated weights as it seemed like a waste of money, but I had many cents saved up from my childhood, which I started to use instead.
I have roughly 15kg in euro cents in my vest and I'm regularly talking walks with it.
To get one kilo you need 435 cents and it turns out that in Germany you can also "buy" coins "for free" at the "Bundesbank", that is, you can exchange actual money for weights without any fees. You give 4 euros and 35 cents and you get a kilo. Once you need the money back, you can also sell those coins back to them for free.
I do also suspect that there must be some product that must be more cost effective than coins but denser than sand, but cannot think of it right away. I mean, scrap steel is a couple of cents per kg.
15 kilograms sounds excessive though, I bet the bank clerks hate that trick ;)
It's on my todo list to 3d print some containers to replace the bags with actual "money rolls" so that I can remove them more easily.
There was a time in my life when my legs started hurting and shaking from muscle atrophy because I was programming too much and moving too little.
I was looking for a way to fix that issue and I didn't want to waste time going to a gym, so I started talking walks with a weighted vest. Walking is nice because you can think while walking and with a weighted vest you don't have to walk for hours for it to have a useful effect on your body.
Some people think it's an exercise 'life hack'.
I've used them on and off in the past; useful in limited circumstances.
Free till you count inflation and opportunity cost. (What you could gian as interest with some other investment)
But yeah, probably still cheaper than some product from a store.
Isn't Euro just from 2002? That surely is not that long time ago!
After the introduction of the Euro, all coins were counted in standard sized cups which also fit in the cashiers trays so no swapping needed, the error rate reduced to near zero (at counting, difference between amount on bag and what the bank told us was in it). Also, the machine was 500 grams instead of half a small room.
The same was applied to bank notes, as they also have a standard weight due to standerdized size and production method. This reduced the error rate even further as counting is difficult as it turns out if you want to do it at scale. It also made the task way faster. Theoretically the machine could count the notes in one go, but it mostly reported "error check notes" messages if you did that. Things like thick tape (for repair when the bank note was damaged) was enough to throw it off in some cases.
Those were interesting times, with people buying a 25ct item with a 250 note to not go to the bank to exchange old for new currency. (Fyi, you do not have to legally accept that as the due dilligence needed with high notes would outweigh the cost of the item).
Other anecdote: Also a lot of 50 euro fake notes showed up within months after introduction, easilly cought as they lit up like a freshly washed white shirt under UV light.
LOL, I worked for a bank branch located in a low socio-economic area. The pubs and bars would come in on Monday morning with huge wads of bank notes, wet with beer and whiskey, and it all had to be hand-counted as machines couldn't do it. We then had to bundle up excess notes and heat-shrink wrap them. I'm sure there were some pretty interesting bacterial colonies growing in there!
1, 2, 3, and 5 kopeck coins weighed their value in grams. They could also be used to estimate lengths; 1 kopeck was 15 mm in diameter and 5 kopeck was 25 mm.
According to wikipedia [1,2,3], as a physical coin it was minted periodically throughout Russian history. The Tatar origin of its informal historical name is either 'gold'[4] or 'six'[5].
It was last introduced in 1839-1841 and persisted into Soviet period, until 1991 when it was discontinued by the newly independent Russia. The 1/2/3/5 weight system had to be of the Soviet design, since the metric system was adopted following the Bolshevik revolution, but the weights and dimensions haven't changed since 1926 [6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruble#Russia's_coins
[2] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%BA%D0%B...
[3] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD...
[4] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%B...
[5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Coins,_1924%E2%80...
Deleted Comment
Of course there's a limit to the precision you can get from coins, but considering the scale of their production and the account of handling they see they are surprisingly good
Have you?
So quarters weren't worth 25¢ because the government said so; they were worth 25¢ because they were made out of 25¢ worth of silver.
That's the same reason "peso" means "weight" and the "shekel" and "pound" take their name from units of weight.
This ended in 01965 in the USA, followed by the end of the gold standard, since which the dollar has lost 96% of its value relative to the precious metals that used to define it. The consensus among economists is that this is a good thing because it prevents deflation. I'm not sure.
You're not the only person I've seen do it on this site, and I can't recall ever seeing it not on this site, so I'm wondering if its because you're in the habit (or wanting to be in the habit) for some technical thing you do like working on a database that needs years in that format, or if there's some reason you feel that its better to write them that way in prose?
Why is this important?
Dime: 35 gr
Quarter: 87.5 gr
Half-dollar: 175 gr
Dollar: 350 gr
"Nickel" and "penny" break that pattern, with the first referencing the composition of the coin (originally called a "half-dime"), and penny is a measure of weight, varying by locale. The British penny is 1/240 of a Tower pound (later decimalised to 1/100 in the 1960s), whilst an American pennyweight (used for example in reference to nails) is 1/1000th of a pound.
<https://www.etymonline.com/word/nickel>
<https://www.etymonline.com/word/penny>
First you make the stacks for 15.0, 15.5, .. 17.5, 18.0. Preferrably using tiny amounts of superglue.
Then you put one stack on one side of the scales, and the other stack on the other side, and you have accurate weights for 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0.
You can make some of these combinations more efficiently, but the more coins you use in total, the better accuracy you get as manufacturing variations average out (up to a certain point of course).
It is a bit more cumbersome to make a quarter gram, but you can make one stack of {5x 0.01, 2x 0.02, 1x 0.1, 1x 0.2} for a weight of 27.46 g, and one stack of {2x 0.02, 3x 0.05, 1x 0.01, 1x 0.2,} giving 27.72 g, for a difference of 0.26 g.
As others have mentioned, using Lego is a nice way to make high precision scales. Take a 1x16 Lego Technic brick with holes and balance it on a thick needle through the middle hole. Needle support can be built from other bricks. Use thin sewing thread and some bricks to hang some 6x8 plates from each end.
2p weighs twice as much as 1p.
10p weighs twice as much as 5p.
50p weighs 2.5x as much as 20p.
£2 weighs twice as much as £1.
In this link is a table of the current weight of UK coins, including the ratio between each coin and the coin below it: https://chatgpt.com/share/67151004-3fd0-800c-b534-b5933a7305...
Confirmed with sources like https://thecoinexpert.co.uk/blog/what-do-uk-coins-weigh/ and https://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-...
2p does weigh double 1p
10p does weigh double 5p
But 50p weighs 1.6x 20p
and £2 weighs 1.37x £1
(A4 sheet area is 1/16 of a square metre)