How far can I take a penny in my car before I spend a penny's worth of gas just driving it around?

Question

How far can I take a penny in my car before I spend a penny's worth of gas just driving it around?

Answer 1

Your penny wouldn't make it out of the driveway.

Answer 2

Lets say your car is 25mpg and gas is $3 That would mean every mile you would spend about 9 cents so every 1/9th of a mile you spend 1 cent.

Marissa;)

Answer 3

U started your car...right... end of story.

Answer 4

you would not be able to start your car on a penny

Answer 5

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you are asking a more subtle question than "how far will my car go on $.01 of gas"?

I would phrase your question as, "How far can I drive my car before the additional weight of one penny causes me to incur $.01 in additional fuel cost?"

Let's make the following assumptions:

Gas: $3.25/gallon

Your car gets 20 mpg under typical driving conditions, including starting up.

100 pounds -> 4% reduction in mpg (howstuffworks.com) and this reduction is linear.

With a price of $3.25/gallon,

$.01 gets you 0.0030769230769 gallons.

Pennies (newer than 1982) weigh 2.5 grams, or 0.0025 kg

.0025 kg = 0.0055115566 pounds

100 pounds -> 4% reduction in mpg, so

.005512 pounds -> 0.00022048% reduction in mpg

20 mpg -> 19.999955904 mpg

So how many miles (x) can be driven before .003077 additional gallons are used?

(x/19.999955904) - (x/20) = .003077

-> x*(1/19.999955904) - x*(1/20) = .003077

-> 0.05000011024x - .05x = .003077

0.00000011024x = .003077

x = 27911.767 miles

So the answer is you can go ~28,000 miles before using up the penny's own value. That's a long way, but it also depends heavily on your assumptions. If anything, I think it demonstrates that you should remove unneeded weight from your car, but don't sweat the little stuff!

Answer 6

as far as u want to take it, providing  u spend another penny not the 1 ur  driving  around.

Answer 7

THAT WILL DEPEND ON THE PRICE OF GAS AT THE TIME YOU BUY A PENNYS WORTH AND HOW MANY MPG YOUR CAR GETS .

Answer 8

uh idk. that's sort of an odd question lol.

Answer 9

Assuming 30 mpg and $3.00 gas:

30 miles = one gallon

30 miles = $3.00

(divide both sides by 300)

30 miles/300 = $3.00/300

0.1 miles = $0.01