Posted on 06/12/2015 9:00:55 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
From next Monday Zimbabweans with have their mental arithmetic simplified for them with the news some zeros are coming off the currency.
Quite a lot of zeros. No less than 16, as the federal reserve attempts to end funny money by offering one new Zimbabwe dollar in exchange for 35 quadrillion old ones.
However the real hyperinflation rate is in fact worse. The money being replaced was only issued in 2008, when the exchange rate was one for 10 billion. The real hyperinflation rate has 25 zeroes attached.
This is now hyperinflation an elderly German would recognise, with all its attendant risks.
Since 2009 the dollar and other foreign currencies have been vital for Zimbabwe to remain afloat as confidence in the local currency and governments economic policy of continually printing money has collapsed.
From being a nation of multi-billionaires Zimbabweans will be much poorer from next week; but then most people knew that already.
I can't now find a reference, but I vaguely recollect that hydrogen hasn't been used since 1933.
Hydrogen always seemed to make more sense to me. No nuclear binding energy to account for if the sample is pure 11H. Effectively the mass of 18 grams of H2 would be identical to the mass of a 2 moles of electrons plus a 2 moles of protons -- the electron-proton binding energy is, I believe, negligible to the degree of precision measurable.
But while conceptually simpler, I believe the constant itself was more easily fixed by x-ray crystallography. I first learned of it as 6.02 x 1023 then as 6.023 x 1023. It was changed [to four significant digits] in 1973, I think to 6.022 x 1023.
Anyway, the paper a trillion dollar Zimbabwe note is printed on has to be worth more than the currency, and eventually, even the mole will be too small. Then they'll print googolbucks.
Iearned it as 6.023 × 1023 back in 57. I remember noticing much later that it was quoted as being slightly different, but – not having had any reason to use it after college – I didnt trouble to commit the updated, more-exact number to memory.6.023 is close enough for government work, far as Im concerned.
18 grams, obviously 2 grams. Water on the brain.
no but I do have the wheelbarrow Id need to haul them to the store to buy one loaf of mouldy bread...
I need to get a bunch of those and hand them out to able bodied beggars.
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