Dollar silver. The US Mint continues to make silver $1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation. The quantity of silver chosen in 1792 to correspond to one dollar, namely, 371.25 grains of pure silver, is very close to the geometric mean of one troy pound and one pennyweight. In what follows, "dollar" will be used as a unit of mass. A troy pound being 5760 grains and a pennyweight being 240 times smaller, or 24 grains, the geometric mean is, to the nearest hundredth, 371.81 grains. This means that the ratio of a pound to a dollar (15.52)
Five Grains categories of grains. The name is typically translated as the "Five Grains" or the "Five Portions of cereal", and less often as the "Five Sacred Grains" or "Crops". Some context is important to understanding the concept, however. First, this use of "five" predates modern botanical notions and is better understood as part of the symbolic use of numbers in Chinese culture. From a very early date, Han culture understood the world as composed of five elements and many corresponding pentads were enumerated, including the Five Directions (south, north, west, east, "and" center), the Five Colors (red, black, white, "qing", and