"What are pennies made of?"

A. Hi, Jimie. Pennies today are made of zinc blanks (circles of zinc are punched out of sheets of zinc, like cookies are cut out of a sheet of dough with a cookie cutter). The zinc blanks are then electroplated with copper in plating barrels (we have an article with pictures on line about barrel plating), so the core of the penny is zinc but the skin is copper.

After the copper plating, they are stamped with the familiar head of Lincoln and the date, etc. Coins such as pennies have a raised rim (the lip around the penny is thicker than the body of the penny); this is created by rolling the coin through a passage that is slightly smaller than the original size of the blank so the extra material must mush up as this fatter edge.

Good luck with your project.

A. C'mon, cousin Shalonda, we just finished telling you how pennies are made :-)

But besides the info already given, you can find more about coins at the US Mint site, www.usmint.gov. Also, the History Channel has a nice several minute film clip on how coins are made, although we don't know how long it will remain on line. Good luck!

 2007

A. Hello, Herb; it was 1982. Some 1982 pennies are zinc cores plated with copper, some are solid copper. You can weigh a 1982 penny to see which kind it is. You can search the site for many other factoids about pennies. Good luck.

A. Hello, Megan. The answer is probably "yes", based on the supposition that the copper on the surface somehow reacts with the fluids in the sting area to soothe it. If that be the case, the fact that the core of the penny is zinc might be irrelevant.

But you raise an interesting point for the students who are here for science projects. We can't possibly concede your "given this is true" and then explain "why" :-)    If there is no proof that something is true, there is certainly no proof why it is true).

And if we don't know why something works, then we can't make any projections at all! It might work for any chunk of metal, or it could work because the diameter of a penny is just right while a dime is too small and a nickel too big, or it could be that the stinging sensation comes from alien radiation and can only be deflected by the image of Lincoln :-)

Good question.

A. Don't just post your homework question, cousin Kareli -- teachers tell us to just tell the students to "Do your own homework." But if tell us what you are having difficulty with, we might be able to help you over the rough spots. Before 1982 pennies were made of solid copper, all except in 1943 when pennies were made of steel plated with zinc because copper was in short supply due to WWII.

A. The U.S. penny since 1982 is made of 99.2 zinc and 0.8 copper, with the outside plated with copper.
;-)

A. Hi, Annika. There is no particular reason, conspiracy theories aside :-)

It just happens that the portrait and bust of Lincoln that were used as the model face that way. Also some Jefferson nickels face left and some face right.

Regards,

A. The reason pennies use zinc now and not just copper is that it's cheaper. Copper has become expensive. Because zinc is cheaper, most of the penny is zinc, but the outside is copper so it looks the same (I guess). It still costs more than one cent to make a penny though. :)

A. Hi, Drexel.
As a student, one of your most important jobs is to learn how to "put 2 and 2 together" to solve problems, rather than asking someone else to do so and just give you the answer :-)

To solve this problem you have to find out how much a penny weighs, and then multiply that by the current value of copper per unit weight. If you don't have a scale, you can search this site for "How much does a penny weigh?", you'll see the answer is about 3.1 grams. Then you can google "copper london metal exchange" for the current price of copper to get your answer. Good luck!

Regards,

A. Hi, Amber

Please put a penny in Coke and see what happens; first-hand knowledge beats relying on urban legend, and this one is so very easy to prove or disprove to yourself that it's just not worth wasting time on the internet inquiring about it :-)

Regards,

A. Hi, Cheyenne.

School and study are not about simply asking someone else to do your homework or science project for you :-)

I believe that every one of your questions is already answered without even leaving this single page. If you have questions that are not answered on this page, please try to phrase them in terms of the answers already given, like: "I see that pennies are made by punching blanks out of a sheet of zinc, like using a cookie cutter on dough, then copper plating them, then stamping the images onto them, then rolling the edge, but what I don't understand is . . ." Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi, again, Cheyenne.

I didn't author the words you just wrote, so it would probably be better to call me the editor of the page than it's author. But I am the author of whatever I've personally written here. Yes, Finishing.com would be the publisher.

If you wanted to put in your report that "Pennies are made of round blanks of zinc that are then copper electroplated", and you wanted to cite this page as the source, you could say: 'Mooney, Ted, "What are pennies made of?", Finishing.com Inc., Pine Beach, NJ, USA, retrieved 10/6/2011 from www.finishing.com/111/59.shtml'. You can google "How to cite a website" for various standardized citation formats. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Uh, no, Secelia.

Of the 80-tillion and one things that are not in pennies, Abelsonite is one of them :-)

Which begs the question, why do you ask?

Regards,

A. Hi, Kyra. Copper didn't suddenly get more expensive in 1982. Rather, the government causes inflation, whereby the relative value of money gradually but continually declines, so most materials get gradually more expensive over time, and 1982 was just the point at which the US government decided something had to be done about the fact that the cost of the amount of copper needed for a penny exceeded one cent. This would be a problem because people (and foreign governments) could buy up pennies and then melt them down and sell the copper.

Zinc is cheaper than copper because because there is more of it, or it is less in demand, or it is easier to produce (a subject for another project).

Regards,

A. Hi, Peter. It's too late. If we get rid of pennies, the states will round up sales tax to the nearest nickel, as well as escheating every extra cent. And they'll tell us they are doing us a favor :-)

But seriously, it might be valid to post certain questions, but posting your homework essay and expecting someone else to write it for you is a little over the line :-)

Regards,

A. Hi Volena.

Google the metal in question combined with "London Metal Exchange". Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Alyssa. Because they were made of steel, and steel is magnetic. Good luck.

Regards,