Sure. You should have seen the line this morning at Weight Watchers.Cranberry wrote:Being that the newly discovered "discrepancy" is so small, this finding has virtually no effect on anything.
..and all the rulers in my house are now 11 & 7/8 inches
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Flyingcursor
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This actually effects every government-regulated balance in the world. Here's how it works: All regulated balances (used in pharma industry, government weighing bridges, grocery shops etc.) must be calibrated anything from once per year to once per day depending on criticality and use. They would be typically calibrated using an in-house weight set or an external calibration contractor. The weight set used would be typically sent out for calibration to a national laboratory once a year. The weight set used by the laboratory is calibrated against the national kilo cylinder. This is one of the cylinders mentioned in the article as being "shipped in periodically from around the world."
This weight drift throws the whole thing out by 50 micro-grammes.
Make no mistake people, this is a calibration engineer's definition of Armageddon.
This weight drift throws the whole thing out by 50 micro-grammes.
Make no mistake people, this is a calibration engineer's definition of Armageddon.
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Rod Sprague
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Actually, when you measure things with a balance legal for trade or for use in the sciences, you are comparing two masses. Weight is simply how hard the object is pushing down wherever it happens to be, from sitting still some place on Earth to a rocket accelerating at two gravities. In the rocket traveling at two gravities, it is twice as heavy as it would be simply sitting on the ground, which is a field of roughly one gravity.
If you put something in a balance, you get the same reading in both those contexts, because you are comparing the weight of two objects in the same place. If you are using something like the compression of a spring to compare the weight of something with, like in a bathroom scale, you are simply seeing how hard something is pushing down. Mass does not change from place to place, so comparing two masses is more accurate, plus things like springs change as they get used over time. A mass used in comparison in a balance has no moving parts, so it tends to be more stable, anyway. This is actually a bit of an oversimplification, because of other factors, but that is roughly the difference between mass and weight.
If you put something in a balance, you get the same reading in both those contexts, because you are comparing the weight of two objects in the same place. If you are using something like the compression of a spring to compare the weight of something with, like in a bathroom scale, you are simply seeing how hard something is pushing down. Mass does not change from place to place, so comparing two masses is more accurate, plus things like springs change as they get used over time. A mass used in comparison in a balance has no moving parts, so it tends to be more stable, anyway. This is actually a bit of an oversimplification, because of other factors, but that is roughly the difference between mass and weight.
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Rod Sprague
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