How To: Rip a Penny in Half

No, we're not lying. But before you try and tear a plain old penny in half, you should probably watch this video first or you may hurt your fingers. While ordinary pennies are very, very difficult to rip, if you get rid of the zinc core you are left with only the thin copper shell, which is itself very easy to tear apart.

You only need one common household chemical to complete this awesome magic trick.

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56 Comments

awesome

i agree

good video

Pennies made before 1983 are 95% copper. The amount of copper in these pennies is actually worth 2.2 cents!

freak

Freak? your name is hairycheeseburger.

so i guess this would not work on a pre-83 penny

idk

bring back the barter system

what

Could someone help me out?
The Thing at the top of the page says that it is ILLEGAL to do this to a US penny... but i was under the impression that you can do anything with your money because it is just that... YOUR money. Once you have it, you can do whatever the hell you want with it... I thought (this may be from a History Channel program about money), that once its yours you can write on it, burn it, rip it, whatever because it's your fault that you just lost x-amount of money for doing that.

not your money mate. simply US currency. it's your right to use it, but it ain't worth #$%@.

True dat, Colin. it stopped being our money when the US Federal Govmnt (before or after WWII) demanded all US Citizens surrender there gold bullion to the nearest bank in exchange for the new legal tender, something called - the Federal Reserve Note. Before this paper money was equal in value to gold bullion. Now it ain't worth the paper it's printed on. And you can take *that* to the bank...oh wait.

no its constitutionally prohibited to destroy money

might stem from the romans shaving gold coins

or the flag burning hysterics

cool the penny floats!!! gotta try this

it says 1983 or later wich could be today cuz today is later than that. im wondering is that actualy what they are talking about?

yah he says that because i've had some pennies that are from the 70's and 60's.

yeah i have a ton of 50s pennies. they are way harder than todays

moneyman is correct. Amie is wrong. What may have been an old law waas repealed and once you posess your money, you can destroy it or alter it if you wish, unless you desire to transform the money in an effort to pass it off in a fraudulent way. In which case yo ass goes in front of da judge!

this is so cool 4 sum reason

Thanks!

tht is so cool

nothing much else to do with yr pennies. ain't worth nothing.

You're such an idiot. -.-
5 pennies = one nickel
2 nickels = one dime
2 dimes + 1 nickel = one quarter
4 quarters = one dollar
See, pennies aren't useless as some idiots think.

lol try and use it to buy somthing and watch them crash it in ther hand a then run

Ahahaha. He just Randomly Has a Gram Scale. ahaha down to the point too.

awesome!!!!!!

cool! maybe a new addition to my magic routine...

note to self: not to leave spoon in hydrocloric acid

how is concentrated hydrochloric acid a common household material?

ahahah

F.Y.I. Hydrochloric acid is also stomach acid.

yeah so we have a bottle of stomach acid randomly in the house ha?

great but the seven year old then takes the remains of the penny examines it and says this isnt a real one now do it with this one you give me for my allowance !

Ill just puke in a jar then do the trick ...cool...thnx linx..woot..im awsome...ill post the video

stomach acid is technically hydrochloric acid, but only in the sense that michael jackson is a male. stomach acid is diluted with pepsin (enzyme for digestion) and, of course, whatever crap you shoveled down a few hours ago. even if you starve yourself, it still wouldn't work, because the body is designed to stop the hydrochloric acid from burning a hole through your gut. so yeah jcrk09...go knock yourself out. ;)

Well, the body is not designed, the mucus surrounds the stomach to prevent it from burning a hole through it, who ever thought that boogers are good ? LOL any way I mean the the whole stomach has a layer of Mucus that prevents the acid from coming out...

this guy must think that we're jobless or somethin !

o boring i hate this why would you waste my time

falafax stop talking about a dead man!!! haha does anybody know what happened?

His reply was posted 2 weeks before Mr. Jackson's passing.

I hope you can go to the 99 cents store after that.

haha freaky xD

I would more likely call it dissolving a penny rather than ripping it. The whole penny is not there only the copper portion. Nice chemistry lesson for the day though.

hi maty's

woooooooow

this is cool but how do you get accetone and acid and stuff?

ur right BigAl20 its impo girlfriend

woowwwww thts amazing im doin a science project and i havent came up with any thing but man thats a good one tankzzz:)))))

You can turn a penny into one that looks like brass by boiling it mixed with zinc oxide, then directly heating it in fire, then cooling it in water quickly. for those chem peeps, who dont know, that is ZnO2 + heat, which creates ZnCo2, which is brass.