I think we need a very different subject for the next topic about nothing (my timbers are still shivering).
How about this one: what is the plural of penny (as in the coin)? Well, depends on where you are. In a lot of the English speaking world, it is 'pence'. In the US and Canada, it is 'pennies' but if value instead of the actual coinage is being referenced, this it is 'cents', again in the US and Canada.
Speaking of pennies, you should all be glad to know that the US got the price of making a penny down to 1.3 cents (pence for you UK et. al folks) each in 2013, a considerable improvement from the cost of 2.41 cents in 2011.
And US pennies have been made out of a number of metals and alloys, starting of course with pure copper in the olden' days and working its way to today's zinc / copper alloy (almost all zinc though) plate with pure copper. By the 1970's, it cost more than a penny to make a penny, and it was proposed to change the material from the then- current material, brass, to aluminum. One and a half million aluminum pennies were actually struck by US mints before the idea (and apparently the pennies themselves) was scrapped for two reasons: the first is that vending machines could not deal with the new material. The second reason is more interesting though, as aluminum does not block X-rays well, and in fact is difficult to detect in human soft tissue such as the lungs or gastrointestinal tract, aluminum pennies posed a problem for the medical community to detect them in little Johnny or Mary (or Jim after a heavy beer night perhaps). Sure, the bottle caps would show up 'in there' but not aluminum pennies. So while we spend a few dozen million dollars a year, at least we can take comfort knowing that our children are safe from X-ray invisible pennies....
Brian
