30 January 2010

Gross Or Net

My head's too heavy, according to Emergency Contact. I think it likely that it's approximately the right weight for my size, although sometimes I do get a little tired lugging it around. A good lie down is usually good for what ails ya, though.

I decided that I needed to put a figure to this alleged heaviness, so taking the Archimedes approach, I ran down the street starkers, shouting eureka. Actually, that's not true. I had thongs on.

After getting home, I decided to take the other Archimedes approach and put my head in a full bucket of water, aiming to catch the overflow and therefore work out the volume of my head, and then do some calculations on likely density and mass. Unfortunately, I have no real way to gauge the density of my head (stop it) and although we are supposed to be mostly made up of water, I felt it was still too inaccurate to warrant the effort, as well as potentially dangerous. After all, I am a little forgetful. What if I failed to take it out again?

So, I lay down with my head on the bathroom scales. Emergency Contact, not getting into the spirit of scientific enquiry, got annoyed with me when I got her out of bed to come and read the scales (some experiments cannot wait, no matter what the time of night) but we got an answer.

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