Pity the poor penny: the little metal disk lies on the sidewalk for days before someone finally picks it up. Pennies just don't count for much these days. You can't even buy "penny candy" with them anymore.
A penny made before 1982 consisted of ninety-five percent copper. In the early 1970s, the value of copper in a U.S. penny had risen to nearly one cent. The U.S.
Mint had to make a change, so they manufactured more than a million pennies out of aluminum. Congress rejected the aluminum pennies, though, so they were destroyed.
The Mint then began manufacturing pennies with 97.5% zinc. This worked until zinc began increasing in value. A penny now cost about 1.7 cents to make. The Mint makes more than seven billion pennies each year and then sells them to the Federal Reserve for one cent each, which means that the U.S. Treasury is losing about fifty million dollars a year on penny production.
Several solutions have been proposed for the problem, one of which is to do away with pennies altogether, just as the U.S. did with half-cents in the mid-1800s. Several other countries have stopped making their least valuable coins.
This solution creates problems, though. Some people like one-cent coins. Others fear that when merchants are making change for cash purchases, they'll round up instead of down, which penalizes customers. A third problem is that without pennies, we would rely more on nickels, which consist of seventy-five percent copper and cost nearly ten cents to manufacture.
So, how can we solve the problem of the lowly penny? Perhaps for now, we should ignore it, like the penny on the sidewalk, and focus instead on the ten-cent nickel.
1. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The cost of making a penny is less than what a penny is worth.
B. The cost of making pennies leads to a variety of problems
C. The U.S. Mint has replaced the copper in pennies with zinc.
D. Nickels cost twice as much to make than what they are actually worth.
2. When the copper used in making pennies became too expensive, the U.S. Mint started using zinc instead. What new problem did this solution lead to?
A. The U.S. Mint had a difficult time finding enough zinc to produce the number of pennies needed.
B. The pennies lost value and were worth less than a full cent.
C. The U.S. Mint was no longer making any profit from penny production.
D. Zinc increased in value and the penny became even more expensive to produce.
3. Based on the passage, the reader can infer that.
A. metal coins will continue to change in value.
B. metal coins will soon become cheaper to produce.
C. pennies will eventually become obsolete.
D. pennies will soon be made from copper.
4. The author of this passage would most likely agree that.
A. pennies will be produced for centuries to come.
B. the penny problem will not easily be solved.
C. the issue of penny value is being distorted.
D. pennies are the most valuable currency we have.
What the answers to question 1, 2, 3 and 4
1. B. The cost of making pennies leads to a variety of problems.
2. D. Zinc increased in value and the penny became even more expensive to produce.
3. C. Pennies will eventually become obsolete.
4. B. The penny problem will not easily be solved.
The answers to the questions are:
1. The main idea of the passage is B. The cost of making pennies leads to a variety of problems.
2. The new problem that arose from using zinc instead of copper in pennies was D. Zinc increased in value and the penny became even more expensive to produce.
3. Based on the passage, the reader can infer that C. pennies will eventually become obsolete.
4. The author of this passage would most likely agree that B. the penny problem will not easily be solved.