Of Coins and Coke
How many times have you gone up to a vending machine to buy a can of Coke only to have your coin fall straight through the machine? Needless to say, you retreive your perfectly legal coin and put it in again - only to be greeted by the sound of it landing back in the coin return, again and again and again.
Exasperated you do what you always have done in this situation, and by the marks on the machine many others have done before you. You rub the coin on the side of the machine for a few seconds, put it back in again and as if by magic it's accepted. Now being scientifically minded I'm not generally one to fall for stupid superstitions but today I began to think. I tried to insert this one coin 5 or 6 times before rubbing it, afterwards it was accepted first time. Seems a little too coincidental in my mind - maybe there's something in this trick...
So I began to look into how rubbing it on the side could have any effect. At first, the only thing I could think of was that the temperature of the coin rose ever so slightly, causing it to expand an even smaller amount and machine was happier to accept the slightly larger coin. But surely, just a couple of seconds couldn't heat up the coin enough to have any sort of effect. That idea went the same way as my now empty can...in the bin.
So I Googled it. Great help it was too. Next to nothing addressing this phenomenon except one tiny reference to static electricity. Could it be that a statically charged coin could cause the sensors to reject it? Sounds very plausible and rubbing the coin on the machine would act as a grounding thus removing the charge from the coin. Simple. But hold on, somethings not quite right. I'd already tried the coin in the machine, it had already rolled down metal chutes and into metal hatches multiple times. Surely that would have the same grounding affect as rubbing it on the side?
The mystery continues, I've searched the web to no avail, I've asked friends who now all think I'm mad. Where do I turn next?
Exasperated you do what you always have done in this situation, and by the marks on the machine many others have done before you. You rub the coin on the side of the machine for a few seconds, put it back in again and as if by magic it's accepted. Now being scientifically minded I'm not generally one to fall for stupid superstitions but today I began to think. I tried to insert this one coin 5 or 6 times before rubbing it, afterwards it was accepted first time. Seems a little too coincidental in my mind - maybe there's something in this trick...
So I began to look into how rubbing it on the side could have any effect. At first, the only thing I could think of was that the temperature of the coin rose ever so slightly, causing it to expand an even smaller amount and machine was happier to accept the slightly larger coin. But surely, just a couple of seconds couldn't heat up the coin enough to have any sort of effect. That idea went the same way as my now empty can...in the bin.
So I Googled it. Great help it was too. Next to nothing addressing this phenomenon except one tiny reference to static electricity. Could it be that a statically charged coin could cause the sensors to reject it? Sounds very plausible and rubbing the coin on the machine would act as a grounding thus removing the charge from the coin. Simple. But hold on, somethings not quite right. I'd already tried the coin in the machine, it had already rolled down metal chutes and into metal hatches multiple times. Surely that would have the same grounding affect as rubbing it on the side?
The mystery continues, I've searched the web to no avail, I've asked friends who now all think I'm mad. Where do I turn next?
posted by Quack at
10:58 PM
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