How many silver dollars in a gallon container???

[Coinosaurus]

Folks-

 

I need to know how many silver dollars could go in a gallon container. EVP, what I need you to do is crack out all your EDs and then pour 'em into one of those plastic milk jugs. Make sure not to shake them up too much, you wouldn't want to damage them or anything Then tell me how many you got in.

 

I'll tell you where I'm going with this later

 

[EVillageProwler]

Without trying to get the coins to settle too much, I was able to fit 77 ED and standard silver dollar-sized coins into a gallon container.

 

This was a tough exercise; it's a good thing that I have a large hoard of Ikes!

 

EVP

 

[Coinosaurus]

EVP-

 

That number seems pretty low......I think you better post a picture of all those EDs in the gallon jug just so we can be sure

[EVillageProwler]

Uhhhh, my camera isn't working right now!

 

EVP

 

[Coinosaurus]

Busted right after you took the "which one is better picture", huh

[EVillageProwler]

Yup! Weird, isn't it?!?

 

EVP

 

[satootoko]

77 slabs sounds about right.

[nwcs]

Depends, what shape is the container?

[jtryka]

I will say 900, did I win the gallon jug of EDs?

[GP_]

745! Do I win a jug of milk?

[Coinosaurus]

Well, you guys are a lot of help I am going to do some experiments tonight and play around with this some more.

 

The question was in reference to a note in a Carson City newspaper where the editor noticed someone carrying a "half bushel" of silver dollars out of the mint. This is 8 gallons & I want to come up w/a reasonable estimate of how many coins this was.

[Coinosaurus]

I have conducted a very scientific experiment using a measuring cup in the kitchen. I poured a large number of the same denomination coins into the measuring cup then added water to level it off. By denomination, the following coins consume the amount of total volume in the bin:

 

1c: 67% (i.e. 33% water to level it off)

5c: 67%

10c: 71%

25c: 69%

 

I had thought that the number for dimes would be significantly higher since you would think that they should pack more closely together. Didn't turn out that way.

 

It appears that 70% is a reasonable number to use for such calculations. There are probably academic papers and so forth on "settling theory" and the amount of space a large number of like things take up in a bin. You could write computer software to model such behavior but it would be darn complicated.

[davefperry]

According to onlineconversion.com 1 bushel [uS, dry] = 8 gallon [uS, dry]. A half bushel would be 4 gallons. I couldn't come up with the volume of a Morgan to use with the 70% equation but with a weight of 26.73 grams per coin and 4 gallons of 77 coins each the weight would be about 18 lbs. for a half bushel. Fit a hundred coins into a gallon and the weight becomes 23.5 lbs. for a half bushel.

I know this doesn't help much with the original question but I wanted an idea of how much weight this guy was carrying.

[jtryka]

I would think of it this way, a mint bag holds about $1000 in silver dollars, and that's a bit larger than a gallon jug. I would think that somewhere between 3 and 4 mint bag would fit in half a bushel. Hope this helps!

[davefperry]

In that case 3 1/2 mint bags (app. half bushel) would weigh over 200 lbs. and be tough to carry. Maybe you can't believe everything you read in the paper.

[TomB]

I guess the answer is none if the opening to the gallon container is small enough!