Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Coin
Summary
A 'coin' is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government. Coins often have images, numerals, or text on them. The faces of coins or medals are sometimes called the obverse and the reverse, referring to the front and back sides, respectively. The obverse of a coin is commonly called heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and the reverse is known as tails.
A coin is generally made of metal or an alloy, or sometimes of human-made materials. Precious metal-based coins had the advantage of carrying their value within the coins themselves. On the other hand, they induced manipulations, such as the clipping of coins to remove some of the precious metal.
Most coins are made of a base metal, and their value comes from their status as fiat money — the value of the coin is established by law. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulated coins has occasionally been lower than the value of the metal they contain, primarily due to inflation. If the difference becomes significant, the issuing authority may decide to withdraw these coins from circulation, possibly issuing new equivalents with a different composition, or the public may decide to melt the coins down or hoard them (see Gresham's law). Currently coins are used as money in everyday transactions, circulating alongside banknotes. Usually, the highest value coin in circulation (excluding bullion coins) is worth less than the lowest-value note. Coins are usually more efficient than banknotes because they last longer: banknotes last only about four years compared with 30 years for a coin.
Exceptions to the rule of face value being higher than content value currently occur for bullion coins made of copper, silver, or gold (and rarely other metals, such as platinum or palladium), intended for collectors or investors in precious metals.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (6)
CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I
Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics a
CS-234: Technologies for democratic society
This course will offer students a broad but hands-on introduction to technologies of human self-organization.
COM-102: Advanced information, computation, communication II
Text, sound, and images are examples of information sources stored in our computers and/or communicated over the Internet. How do we measure, compress, and protect the informatin they contain?
Related publications (7)
Related concepts (44)
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au () and atomic number 79. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental (native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits.
Coin collecting
Coin collecting is the collecting of coins or other forms of minted legal tender. Coins of interest to collectors often include those that were in circulation for only a brief time, coins with mint errors, and especially beautiful or historically significant pieces. Coin collecting can be differentiated from numismatics, in that the latter is the systematic study of currency as a whole, though the two disciplines are closely interlinked. Many factors determine a coin's value including grade, rarity, and popularity.
Silver
Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (, derived from the Proto-Indo-European h2erǵ 'shiny, white') and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. The metal is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.