Non-Financial

The price of commodities have risen sharply over the past few years. As we know, coins circulated through the ages have been made from various base metals such as copper, zinc and nickel. Cheaper metals are used to mint new coins as the intrinsic value of the old coins start to exceed their nominal values.

The website www.coinflation.com gave some interesting information for this trend. According to the website, the quarter issued from 1932 to 1964 is now worth $2.63, more than 10 times its nominal value. More recently, the 1959-1982 one-cent coin is worth about two cents at today’s copper prices. I guess people might start to horde the more valuable coins if metal prices continue to rise.

I found the following three questions from an article in the April 2006 issue of Smartmoney rather interesting:

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2) If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

Each question has an intuitive — but wrong — answer. See if you are ‘tricked’ by your intuition. 😉

PS. The answers are given in the Comments.