science

Piggy bank

Piggy bank is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Piggy bank rather than just read about it. In short: A piggy bank (sometimes penny bank or money box) is a coin container normally used by children, featuring a slot at the top to insert coins or folded bank notes. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century.

Key takeaways

Piggy bank belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Piggy bank to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Piggy bank from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A piggy bank (sometimes penny bank or money box) is a coin container normally used by children, featuring a slot at the top to insert coins or folded bank notes. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century. These items are also often used by companies for promotional purposes, and many financial service companies use piggy banks as logos for their savings products.

Uses The general use of piggy banks is to store loose change in a quaint, decorative manner. They commonly serve as a pedagogical device to teach the rudiments of thrift and saving to children; money can be easily inserted, but is more difficult to remove. Because they can be fairly secure from casual theft, they are sometimes used by temples and churches to collect monetary donations, then remove the contents periodically.

Design Modern piggy banks are usually made of painted ceramic or porcelain. They are popularly in the shape of a rotund pig, but come in a range of shapes, sizes, and colors. In addition to a slot at the top, many piggy banks have a rubber plug on the underside to allow removal of the coins; others are made of vinyl and have a removable nose for easy coin access. Some incorporate electronic systems that calculate the amount of money deposited. To discourage spending, some banks do not have an opening for removal of coins, requiring the owner to smash the bank with a hammer or other means, to access the money within.

Origins

The oldest Western find of a money box dates from the 2nd century BC Greek colony Priene, Asia Minor, and features the shape of a miniature Greek temple with a slit in the pediment. Money boxes of various forms were also excavated in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and appear quite frequently in late ancient provincial sites, particularly in Roman Britain and along the Rhine.

Pig shape

The earliest known pig-shaped money containers date to the 12th century on the island of Java. The Javanese term cèlèngan (ꦕꦺꦭꦺꦁꦔꦤ꧀; literally "likeness of a wild boar", but used to mean both "savings" and "piggy bank") is also in the modern Indonesian language. A large number of boar-shaped piggy banks were discovered at the large archaeological site surrounding Trowulan, a village in the Indonesian province of East Java and a possible site of the capital of the Majapahit Empire. There are some folk etymologies regarding the English language term "piggy bank," but in fact, there is no clear origin for the phrase. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1913, and from 1902 for the variant "pig bank". The earliest known uses of "pig bank" are in newspaper articles from 1900. The popularity of Western piggy banks may have originated in Germany, where pigs were revered as symbols of good fortune. The oldest German piggy bank dates to the 13th century and was recovered during construction work in Thuringia.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Piggy bank

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Piggy bank claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Piggy bank before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Piggy bank ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Piggy bank

In research: Piggy bank appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Piggy bank in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Piggy bank is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Banks, Coins, Figurines, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Piggy bank outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Piggy bank in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Piggy bank means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Piggy bank out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Piggy bank in simple terms?

Why does Piggy bank matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Piggy bank?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Piggy bank.