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  • Letter

Thickness of a three-sided coin: A molecular dynamics study

Gopinath Subramanian

  • X-Computational Physics Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA

Phys. Rev. E 103, L041301 – Published 26 April, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.103.L041301

Abstract

This Letter presents a numerical study across parameter space to calculate the aspect ratio (ratio of length to diameter) of a fair “three-sided coin”: a cylinder that when tossed, has equal probabilities of landing heads, tails, or sideways. The results are cast in the context of previous analytical studies, and the various mechanisms that govern the dynamics of coin tossing are compared and contrasted. After more than 7×108 tosses of coins of various aspect ratios, this study finds the critical aspect ratio to be slightly less than (but not exactly equal to) 3/2≈0.866.

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