Absent For A Bit ....

I am away for a little while working on a few or more episodes for The Adventures of My Space Alien Alter Ego story ... will return (to Earth) soon!

Notice: Blogger has screwed up and lost a bunch of photos out of my blog! They are replaced with a gray silhouette of a human head. I will eventually get them replaced with the correct photo, it may take a while to find and fix everything. So some of my stories don't make much sense without their photos, sorry for the inconvenience.

esbb

2012-05-25

Lotza Fun In Tiny Weighs



I just got a new toy so that I can accuRately weigh the catalysts for chemical Reactions. But of course I wiLL use it to weigh a vaRiety of things. Soon I wiLL know appRoximately how many gRams common household objects weigh.

The sneaky thing about this pRoduct is its name. The name of the company is AmeRican Weigh Scales, Inc, but the scale is made in China. I suppose it is possible to get the letteRs C-H-I-N-A from the woRds AmeRICaN weigH.

I neveR dReamed that you could buy a poRtable electRonic scale capable of weighing objects up to 100 gRams out to an accuRacy of one hundRedth of a gRam, all for less than 20 dollaRs. That includes the pRice for a 100 gRam calibRation weight. Wow. 100 gRams is almost a 1/4 of a pound.

Chemists must always have new toys, and a scale is essential.

One of the eXpeRiments I have planned is to measuRe the lifting poweR of a helium balloon. I plan to tie a balloon onto eitheR the fifty or hundRed gRam calibRation weight, and then see how much less it weighs on the scale. Then I will be able to accuRately know how many balloons to buy in oRdeR to Re-enact the scene from the PixaR movie "Up" wheRe the old man floats his house away to South AmeRica. I have been needing to get back to BRazil for quite awhile. Recife here I come!

Update: Rob Z Tobor asked me if it was possible to get the scales to weigh themselves. I thought about it for a few seconds, and realized there was a load cell involved, so I turned the scale upside down on a tall pill bottle of vitamins, and the scale pressed down on itself.

The answer is 76.7 grams

9 comments:

fmcgmccllc said...

Well you know my thoughts on made in China, sometimes ok-sometimes not. Welcome home.

Shelly said...

You are talking over my head, but I'm happy for you and the ultra cool looking scale!

Rob Z Tobor said...

They look like the sort of scales any self respecting drug baron would be well jealous of.

Just one small question how much do they weigh, is there some cunning way to make them weigh themselves. I weigh myself sometimes but not with any degree of accuracy.

Marianne said...

Only you, ESB.

esbboston said...

Rob: I put your question in the blog post as an update. Of course I'm no drug baron or any other form of pharma royalty, other than I have a relative who just graduated from pharmacy school.

Marianne: Yes, only me.

Shelly: I am talking over your head? If I am talking over your head then I calculated that you must be 5' 2" taLL or shorter.

FGC: Yes, I know how you feel about China. I am sure that my feelings about China fluctuate.

Rob Z Tobor said...

Well done on weighing the scales, the only other question I can think of is....... Bearing in mind if you weigh something on your new scales what the weight is, represents the weight of the item on the scales.

So what you weighed was the world, so I think you may have discovered the world weighs 76.7grams which seems unlikely unless a extraterrestrial being, (a large one) has tied a helium balloon to planet Earth close to oppose the point you weighed it...

(By the way please feel free to ignore this comment is is very very hot in the UK right now and my brain is deranged.)

esbboston said...

Rob: The heat in UK-on-Wales could possibly account for your derangedness, but I figured that it was reaLLy just a matter of which end of the Deranged Scale you are at, as I believe we both tend to live there most of the time.

Oh, weighing the entire world by turning my scales upside down? Why, I didn't realize that I was weighing the entire world, I th0ught I was just weighing the scales themselves with the scales. But you may be correct. I like your idea of an alien possibly using a gigantic helium balloon to make the entire earth lighter. Do you remember me teLLing you ab0ut the lighter Helium-3 is0tope? Each at0m of helium-3 weighs ab0ut 3/4 of a regular common helium-4 at0m, so the bouyancy of a Helium-3 filled balloon would be greater, pr0bably somewhere between helium and hydrogen. And in outer space there is a greater abundance of helium-3 than on earth, so space aliens, and by pr0xy your hero Steven de la Spielberg, would have easy access to this chemical.

I already have an0ther outstanding invention involving my tiny scales, but I have not completed the ph0tographical documentation of the pr0ject. Coming so0n to a bl0g near you.

Aysh said...

The font in this post was more varied in size then usually, it made me feel a bit dizzy.....I like it!

I downloaded a Sound Pressure Level meter app on my iPhone as my dissertation tutor insisted it would come in handy in so many situations. I've never used it once :/

You're new toy seems cool though :D

esbboston said...

Aysh: Congratulations on getting to fifty readers! I got in my time machine and went 100 years into the future, and my number of readers had only increased by four. Since I have cheap economy model time machine from North Korea that is only capable of going eXactly 100 years into the future (and then back 100.3) I guess I could ratio it out in order to see how long it would take. So if I need another 19 people, that would be 4 and 3/4 groups of 4, so 475 years from now I should be probably at 50 people. Of course by then, most likely 95 percent of my listed readers would have died of at least old age, or possibly an angry angry hippo.

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