Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com> wrote: > transparent operation. No expert can fool one. No expert could have > > fooled one used in Edo Japan in the marketplace, or in ancient Egypt. > > Certainly they could. > > A balance is only as good as the weights you use with it. Using false > weights was, in fact, pretty common, IIRC. > > At some point you want to be sure that the weights used have been marked > with the seal of the government inspector, who has confirmed their > weight . . .
I meant you cannot conceal the fundamental operation. That is to say, if you hand over the scale to an engineer or physics professor, she will quickly determine that the weights are false (by using good ones) or that there is a hidden weight in the arm, or the tick marks on the arm are not where they should be. If the crooked fish vendor is using it, he might be able to do a sleight-of-hand trick that a physics professor would miss. This is analogous to Rossi insisting that observers use only his watt meter. Some devices are fully transparent in their principles and operation. Others are not. Many are in between. A flow calorimeter is on the transparent end of the scale. McKubre has often made this point. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote: > I bet experts could, and did. Some were caught and died, I'm also sure. > Some were not caught. > They would never kill someone in Edo Japan for such a minor offense. Unless he was weighing out government gold or something. - Jed
