The other day right after my shower I put the weighing scales on the carpet and weighed myself and was promptly shocked… apparently I had put on over 10 lbs.
a few housr later when I weighed myself with the scales on firm ground, I was back to where I used to be.
I do know that Newton’s laws come into the picture here… but can someone explain that in simple language?
Cheers
If you and the scale and the support surface had come to equilibrium, i.e. you are all stationary with respect to each other, then the readings should be the same.
One explanation is you had water in your eye the first time and misread the scale.
If you scale is at an angle to the ground the reading would be less , but the uneveness of the carpet isn’t going to change the reading. Do you have long hair? Was it soaking wet when you weighed yourself? Did you have a wet towel on? these are the only explanations I can think of.
This has nothing to do with my state of affairs (wet, long hair etc), because the same thing happened when we tried to weigh a suitcase full of stuff; there was difference of 10 lbs or so.
I think that it has something to do with the springiness of the carpet that acts like a spring. But seems to me that it would work towards reducing the reading and not increasing it… and thats why I am here asking the teeming millions
Probably has to do with the level floor vs unlevel carpet. Not that the carpet is unlevel, but that when placed on the carpet and weigh appied, the four corners of the scale don’t remain level.
This article from New Scientist deals with this effect:
It seems that it is a consequence of the amout the base of the scale bends when weight is applied, which is less when there is carpet supporting the base. Why the reported weight goes up rather than down is a consequence of the internal mechanics of the scale.