Why Is A Dime Smaller Than A Penny
Olivia Luz
Eventually other coins such as nickels and pennies were needed to make transactions easier.
And that is why pennies and nickels are larger than dimes even though they worth less. It s worth five cents. But because the dime was already a very small coin it wasn t possible to make pennies and nickels even smaller so they ended up with a coin that was larger than the dime. Thus the dime had to be rather small since it only had one tenth the amount of silver that the dollar coin had.
Things get even more confusing when you consider the dime. Before that the five cent coin was the tiny silver half dime which was only about 16 mm in diameter a nickel is 21 mm. Though the dime is the smallest us coin now in the past there were even smaller coins. The modern nickel only came about in 1866 as a response to inflation during the civil war.
The united states used to have an intrinsic monetary system that relied on circulating precious metal coins for commerce. I was visiting a school today and a fourth grader asked me the following question why is the dime so small the penny and nickel are both larger than the dime but the dime is worth more.
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