Believe it or not, the world of weighing scales can be truly fascinating, especially if you like history and technology. These items have developed massively in the past few decades and are now more accurate than never, helping perfect formulae or detecting anomalies. If you’re passionate about random yet interesting things about scales, here is everything you need to know.
- Weighing scales are devices specifically designed to ascertain the weight of different items and can vary widely, depending on their purposes. Their rating scale can vary from less than an ounce to thousands of pounds.
- They first appeared over 4000 years ago and they didn’t see an improvement until the late 1770s. Scales used various mechanisms to determine the certain weight of a product, the oldest one being balances. Ever since the industrial revolution, the original balance turned into a spring scale and, later on, into a digital weighing scale that is used in all aspects of life.
The latter are the most accurate and are now used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries to create the perfect formulas and discover new medicines to treat or cure certain diseases.
- Balancing weighing scales have been used for millennia to measure traded merchandises, from grains to gems, gold or spices. However, the balancing weighing scale also symbolizes justice and the prevalence of good. The symbol is mainly used by lawyers and judges to express the independence of justice.
- They can have multiple uses, but they are specifically useful in the kitchen or to measure the body weight. The body weight weighing machines are used to help you achieve the perfect weight but also to give more clues about someone’s BMI, body fat, muscle mass or water ratio. It’s the perfect instrument if you want to lose weight or maintain your ideal weight through diets and exercising routines.
However, you shouldn’t obsess over your ideal weight as the same weight can make you look extremely different, based on your diet. For instance, you can have the same weight and look chubby mainly because of fat or you can turn excessive fat into muscles and look more fit and attractive.
- Measure your body weight correctly. Bear in mind that the human body is a miracle and its weight and height fluctuates during the day and is influenced by many external and internal factors. Thus, a few tips to make sure you’ve found your true weight would be to always conduct the measurements early in the morning, naked, and on an empty stomach.
Avoid weighing yourself after you’ve eaten or just came out of the shower. The weight of the human body varies in the same day, where a person can gain or lose a couple of pounds, while the height varies as well, mainly because of gravitation. In addition, women should avoid weighing themselves before their periods as they retain more water during these days.
- Scales can display errors because of a series of external factors, including the air movement, magnetic or electrostatic fields, moisture and water, temperature changes, and others. The standard error allowed varies depending on the item you weigh and its importance.
For instance, in the restaurant industry, the same food portion is allowed to weigh up to 10% more or less than its stated value, while pharmaceutical companies don’t allow a standard error that is above 2-3%. The error should be even smaller when dealing with highly sensitive products, substances or technologies.
- Scales are available in a wide array of colors and shapes and are mainly made of plastic or metal. The heavier the material, the harder it will be for the scale to be perfectly calibrated and maintain its properties over the years. Sometimes, an analog weighing machine is more accurate because it doesn’t interfere with the electromagnetic fields of the weighing items.
- The term “scale” originates from a series of words, including “scala” and “schaal” that used to mean “bowl” in different languages from the 13th century or even before that.
- The future of digital scales allows for such items to be integrated with all the aspects of our lives. For instance, some products have integrated Bluetooth and Wifi technologies that allow you to connect them to your smartphone or tablet and measure in real time, through a series of apps, your weight, BMI, and other parameters.
- Digital scales are extremely sensitive and they must be used accordingly. Each time you move the digital scale, it must be recalibrated. This is why it will take some time until your product displays your weight.
