Quick Rando Question : Fair Coin

[irchans]

I taped together a few pennies until the number of side results was approximately equal to the number of heads or tails. At about 11 pennies,

#sides ~= #heads ~= #tails.

A penny has a thickness of about 1/13 of its diameter.

[AaronBrown]

Except that it doesn't really come to rest. It stops moving, but there's no reason to expect it will be flat against a surface.

[mtrubo]

as far as the math goes, i get the same thing as Nottom.
...it's been a while since i've had to bust out the Tan function [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[DMBFan23]

Nottom,

I would think the action resulting from the coin hitting the surface would impact the orientation of the coin more if it landed on its edge as opposed to the side...after all, on a side the coin has a whole side's worth of surface area touching the surface...very stable.

whereas on an edge, no matter how thick we make the coin, we still only have a very small amount touching the surface at any time

it seems like if the coin were to land initially on its side, it would be more likely to stay there as opposed to initially landing on an edge and staying on an edge. this is probably a function of the energy in the coin and however you can translate that to some sort of bounce coefficient - so every time the coin bounces you have the same process with slightly less energy.

I would think the coin would have to be slightly thicker than geometry would suggest to compensate for this

[DiceyPlay]

Is it landing on carpet or concrete? Is it made of soft metal or is it extremely brittle?

I'll guess 2/5 of it's diameter.

Naw, make that 3/5 - I don't want the coin to topple over too easily before it comes to rest.