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Adam Kalsey

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Travel weight of coins

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26 Aug 2014

Preparing for a long trip overseas I emptied the laptop bag I use for longer trips out. It was getting heavy, and I needed to cut the load down. Among other things, I found 115 coins from 6 different countries in there.

When I get to an airport, I dump the contents of my pockets into a small mesh zippered pocket in the bag. I don’t empty it often enough and the collection of coins just grows. The pile of coins in my bag weighed 18.1 ounces — over a pound.

The biggest difference in weight-to-value is the US penny. They’re 0.10oz each. The second biggest is the Philippine 5 Peso coin. It’s worth about 11 cents US, but weighs 1/3 of an ounce. So if you want to waste weight for very little monetary benefit, carry lots of these coins. Also of interest, the official abbreviation for the Philippine Peso is "PHP" just like the programming language.

All the power cables, video dongles, thumb drives, and power adapters in my bag have a total weight of 11 ounces. Other than my 35 ounce laptop, this pile of coins was by far the heaviest thing in my bag - and something I can live without.

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