What happens if you melt pennies

Ok, so as we can see here, this is focused on pennies and nickels. What is illegal is if you get a whole pile of coins, melt them down, and sell the bullion as scrap metal. Why on earth would someone do this, you ask? The nickel was actually worth less than the metal used to make it. Technically, you could collect a truckload of nickels, melt them all down, and sell them for a profit. Obviously, this would be pretty annoying for the US Mint.

Once people catch on and start up new scrap metal businesses, there would be a financial strain on the US government to make new coins. Many online debates have popped up over the legality of melting down U.

It is not illegal to melt, destroy, or modify any U. However, as with any law, there are important details to consider before deciding to melt down coins. Pennies and nickels contain copper, zinc, and other metals that are of great monetary value. It is because of this that melting down these metals for the sole intention of selling to offshore or local metal scraping industries is illegal.

The selling of large amounts of melted-down nickels would be expensive for the government to reproduce over time. About: Awesome Gear I've designed myself. More About Mrballeng ». Melting pennies will release Zinc Oxide fumes which cause flu-like symptoms including fever, chills, nausea, headache, fatigue, muscle aches, joint pains, shortness of breath, chest pain, and cough.

Use a well ventilated area with power assisted ventilation to avoid breathing these fumes. That being said, this is ring made from pennies. You can smelt the copper coating off leaving you with zinc. Pennies minted after are all made like this.

You could always hammer the ingot flat and follow the nickel ring instructions. A surprising thing is how lite it is. My wedding ring is the same size weighing 8 grams.

This ring weighs in at 3. Finalist in the Hack It! Contest View Contest. Did you make this project? Share it with us! I Made It! Faux Chenille Scarf by Bellacricket in Sewing. HeatherD51 1 year ago on Step 3. Reply Upvote. Frotescue Below Reply 1 year ago. MOCMaster yrralguthrie Reply 2 years ago. You will see a lot of bubbling at the cathode as well. This is hydrogen. I used a 9v battery for this. Brassificaton is a little hit and miss but the message is to pass the metal steadily through the hot flame, not too slowly and not too fast.

With chemicals, we take the MSDS and make it relevant for school teaching. Many schools had done nickel electroplating but Information from Europe was now demanding some pretty nasty hazard warnings on nickel compounds.

The main concern was that it can cause cancer by inhalation and we had to be careful of inhaling aerosols. The risk is very, very small and is only found in badly organised nickel plating factories but when people see these warnings the shutters go up and chemophobia sets in. Our safety regulations suggest we look for less harmful alternatives and despite the solution being quite caustic, teachers understand that hazard better. Nickel compounds are involved in allergic reactions as well.

So I looked for a simple complexing reaction and for once, hit the button first time. Bob, thanks for your safety insight on this experiment. It would be nice for many of us that teach chemistry to be more connected with those of you that know a lot about the hazards associated with certain experiments.

Thank you so much for your insight into this particular experiment. I look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Are you electroplating the copper with a zinc solution, heating it in an open flame and then throwing it in water?

This may be an alternative to coating pennies with zinc dust in 3 M sodium hydroxide. What have you tried? Why are the results hit and miss?

I will try and answer the question in reverse order. The hit and miss reference is to passing the zinc plated copper through a flame. Heat it for a long time in the flame and oxidation takes place of the metals.

The original method of adding the copper to zinc powder in boiling 1 to 6 M sodium hydroxide solution I have seen and used all concentrations is rather not very pleasant. In fact the experiment will even work in acid solutions but the zinc powder forms a ball and the result on the copper is patchy. The important thing is to have the zinc powder in contact with the copper. If you read the previous notes in this thread, I was looking for a replacement for nickel plating for school students in the UK to do, discovered that I could electroplate with zinc and then remembered the gold coin experiment and just put them together.

I hope that helps. The copper will appear on the outside of the nickel. This activity makes the copper content of a nickel alloy visible. Other alloys can also be tested using this same technique.