Coins Don't Smell, You Do... or Do You?
This evening, Lori alerted me to an article she found at "weird science" on MSNBC -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16381098/?pg=9#Science_weird_061228 . She tried to tease by asking, "why do you get that odor when you touch coins?," to which I quickly answered, "a chemical reaction." Her follow-up surprised me more: It's from iron in the coins! Here's the article text at msnbc: "That metallic odor you smell after handling change? It's created by the breakdown of oils in skin after touching objects that contain iron. The chemical reaction has most of us running to wash our hands to get that musty scent out." Well!! As any numismatist surely knows, there's no iron in US coinage, nor much of anywhere else. Most of our coins are made from an alloy of copper and nickel. the penny is mostly zinc (since the early 1980's, prior to that it was mostly copper), and the golden dollar contains manganese in addition to copper, nickel and z...