Britain rules the Weights ?

Sometimes, it seems embarrassing to be British within Europe …we drive on the other side of the road to everyone else, until fairly recently we didn’t even use a decimal system for our money, and we’ve always used this funny ‘Imperial’ system of measuring everything from length to volume to weight.

Ever wondered why we stuck with it for so long ?!

The Problems: 

1. Check that you can use just six ‘old-fashioned’ Imperial weights - ½ , 1 , 2 , 4 , 8 and 16 ounces – to weigh any weight, in halves of an ounce, up to just short of  2 lbs (32 ounces).

2. Try a similar idea, starting with a 10 g weight, and see how far you can get with only 6 weights.

3. But this isn’t the way things are done in the Metric system…nobody likes the idea of a 320g weight in your kitchen scales pan. The standard weights in a Metric scales system are 10 , 25 , 50, 100 , 200 (or 250) , and 500g .

Where are some of the gaps in what you would be able to weigh with this simple ‘standard’ set of weights ? 

4. Which extra weights (duplicates allowed, if you want) do you need in order to be able to weigh any quantity, in 10g steps, from 10g up to at least 600g  (1½ lbs) ?

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Last modified: June 18, 2007