Samsung to Pay Fine with Magic Coins

At first it sounds like a hoax...

The story is:

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

The funny part is that the signed document does not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send the creators of the iPhone their billion dollars in the way they deem best.

First thing I noticed is that the picture that comes with the story isn't quite right. If you look closely, you see those coins aren't spilling from a truck. They're also copper colored and checking the Google we find that the same picture was used in 2007 accompanying a story about melting down pennies. Hmmm, maybe math should be deployed.

OK so the Wolfram says 20 nickels ($1) weigh 3.5 ounces, or .22 pounds. So, do the multiply and you find that a billion dollars worth of nickels weighs 99,200 metric tons, or roughly the same as an Aframax oil tanker. (30 trucks could only carry $5,490,000 worth of nickels and we know from the property of we're not stupid, that $1 billion is more than that)

And here's another thing - it would be just as much work obtaining and transporting a billion dollars worth of nickels as it would receiving them. And where could you get that many coins?

Anyway, this obviously is one of those internet hoaxes. I only even mention it because I heard that somehow the story made it into the Democratic Party Platform.

(well, they believed Obama could lower the waters and heal the earth didn't they?)