Let’s start at the elementary school level. Grade scholars can be introduced to weighing concepts fairly early on in their development. Inexpensive scales with a capacity of up to one or two grams can be used. Students can begin by simply weighing objects in the classroom and recording the results. To demonstrate how objects change weight, for example, students can weigh dry sponges. The sponges can then be dampened and weighed again. Or you can determine the weight of something kids like – a Lego block, for example, or an individual Skittle – and then determine the weight of other objects using the new measurement system ( “One Oreo cookie weighs 12 Lego’s.”).

At the junior high and high school level, more complex uses of laboratory balances can be attempted. The law of the conservation of matter can be demonstrated by heating a piece of copper and weighing it in both its regular and heated states. Or the student could be asked to solve a famous French weight problem: A merchant had a forty-pound measuring weight that broke into four pieces after an accident. When the pieces were subsequently weighed, the weight of each piece was a whole number of pounds and that the four pieces could be used to weigh every integral weight between one and forty pounds. What were the weights of each piece?

At the undergraduate level, we start getting into the realm of serious analytical balance application. The proper use of balances is a 101-level an analytical balance is a classical method of analyzing chemicals, to be used alongside more modern methods such as gas chromatography. For an experiment investigating Beer’s Law, a sample of dried cobalt solution is weighed using an analytical balance. The physical properties of sand in an avalanche can be duplicated in a laboratory using glass beads and a balance. One interesting experiment on record involves how a certain cavity in the human skull changes as the body ages. The cavities were filled with sand, weighed, and then the sand was removed via a vacuum pump. The weight differences were analyzed to determine changes in total volume. Strange, but true.