In food production, accurate weighing is an integral part of the manufacturing process. It ensures that all ingredients are added in the right order and proportion, maintaining product quality.

When weighing with high-precision analytical balances, it is important to tare the container before adding the sample. This reduces the error caused by differences in air currents between the weighing pan and the underlying mass.

Accuracy

Accuracy is the closeness of measurement results to their true value. This includes both trueness (the number of measurement results that fall within a statistical distribution) and precision (repeatability or the spread of measurements over time).

The accuracy of a weighing instrument is primarily determined by its load cell(s). These sensors are made from machined pieces of metal with strain gauges bonded at points on the surface, which bend with the weight of an object, then converts mechanical pressure into a proportional electrical signal for display in the instrument.

Choosing a high-quality load cell is the first step to ensuring accurate weighing. A quality balance is also important, along with calibrating and maintaining it on a regular basis using certified calibration weights. GWP helps eliminate confusion over terms like resolution, division size, readability and accuracy by requiring that all four requirements are met for good measurement practice.

Efficiency

Weighing process efficiency is a vital aspect of any production facility. Inaccurate measurements can result in wasted resources, a loss of profit, and even health risks for consumers. To ensure that weighing processes run smoothly, manufacturers should invest in the right equipment.

Process weighing refers to the integration of scales into production systems that automatically measure and dispense materials according to predetermined criteria. This technology is commonly used in sectors like food and pharmaceuticals to optimize production and reduce waste.

Automated weighing systems can also help speed up onboarding times. Their user-friendly interfaces eliminate the need for complex manual processes, allowing new employees to learn the ropes faster and mitigate the risk of beginner errors. The best weighing systems also feature validation tools that simulate the operating conditions of the system and provide comparisons to expected results. These data are then used to improve the accuracy and reliability of the weighing system. This can greatly reduce the time and effort required to maintain a production line.

Safety

Safe weighing practices are critical in hazardous industrial environments. Any miscalculations in these settings can cause safety hazards, product loss, and tarnished brand reputation.

Weighing equipment used in hazardous locations must be specially designed to mitigate potential hazards. This includes scales certified for use in areas with explosive vapors or dust, such as those used in large bakeries (flour), plastics manufacturing plants (vapors), and chemical plant silos (dust or “flyings”).

These hazardous environments require high-quality, reliable equipment to ensure accurate measurements. Weighing equipment in these environments must also be able to withstand the effects of prolonged exposure to hot and cold temperatures, as well as corrosion from caustic chemicals. Regular inspections and maintenance are necessary to keep these scales in top condition.

Compliance

Weighing is a vital step within the food production process to ensure that ingredients meet recipe specifications. It helps manufacturers meet quality control standards and ensures that every batch looks, tastes, and smells the same as the last. A digital solution makes this entire process more manageable and improves regulatory compliance.

Always use a clean container to receive the weighed substance. The container should never touch the weighing pan of an analytical balance as even the slightest moisture can cause a discrepancy in the mass reading. The container used should also be a suitable size for the capacity of the balance.

It is a good practice to close the balance doors during the weighing process to prevent air currents that may disturb the reading. Additionally, it is important to keep the area where the weighing takes place free of dust and contaminants since this can affect the accuracy of the readings. Lastly, it is important to make sure that the weighing system is properly leveled and zeroed before attempting any weighings.

Over time, too much body fat puts you at greater risk for heart disease, diabetes and other health conditions. Maintaining a healthy weight can reduce those risks.

Pace yourself while eating. Scientists know that the brain needs to receive a complex set of signals from the stomach before you feel full.

Reduce Screen Time

While screens are a part of everyday life, excessive use of TVs, smartphones and other devices can be detrimental to health. It’s important to track screen time and balance it with physical activity and social interaction.

Kids and teens who spend too much time in front of the TV or video games are more likely to become overweight. Also, sitting for long periods of time without moving decreases energy levels and can lead to poor posture that can cause back pain and other joint problems over time.

Excessive screen time reduces attention span and empathy levels, and may interfere with sleep patterns. It’s especially important to limit screen time for kids and teens, as it can have negative effects on their mental health. Make a family commitment to reducing screen time and replacing it with activities like playing outdoor sports or board games. For example, challenge each member of the family to see who can do the most push-ups or jumping jacks during commercial breaks.

Watch Portion Sizes

Portion sizes are crucial to maintaining a balanced diet. Studies show that when people control their food portions, they are able to avoid overeating and excess weight gain. In addition, controlling your portion sizes can help reduce the risk for health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and breathing problems. Portion control tools range from measuring cups and spoons to digital food scales. Many of these tools are designed to provide accurate measurements, but if you’re not comfortable carrying around tools or don’t have access to them while eating, try comparing foods to everyday objects. For example, a serving of meat should be the size of your palm or a cup of peanut butter the size of your thumb.

Watching your meal portions is important even if you don’t want to lose weight. Consuming too many calories over your body’s needs results in weight gain and increases your risk for obesity-related diseases. A few small changes to your daily eating habits can have a big impact on your overall calorie intake and weight.

Scales are important tools for studying objects and phenomena at different spatial scales. To do this, we must first choose the right type of scale.

Scale development, the process of turning a continuum into a harmonious and measuring construct, requires multiple steps: Item creation (which can include reverse-wording to prevent bias), response formats, assessing dimensionality, ant colony optimization for short forms, and content validity.

Weight

Weight is the force of gravity pulling down on an object, calculated as its mass times the acceleration of gravity at a particular location. A scale can’t measure mass directly, however, because gravitational acceleration varies around the Earth. So, a commercial scale is calibrated to a specific site and location for accuracy.

When you stand on a scale, the reading doesn’t change when you lift one foot or two. This is because a scale only reads the total impact your body has on it, not how your body distributes that impact.

Pressure, on the other hand, is a distribution of force over an area. If a block is sliding along an inclined wedge, its pressure will decrease as it loses interaction with the surface of the wedge. This change in pressure causes the weight to appear lower on the scale. This is why it is important to keep your scale clean and free of debris that may affect its movement.

Force

Most scales convert force (which is measured by the amount of pressure applied) to mass. They use a spring that either stretches (like the hanging scale in the produce department at your grocery store) or compresses (like a simple bathroom scale). Rack and pinion mechanisms translate this linear spring motion to a dial reading.

Scale is a ratio that represents the relationship between the dimensions of a model and the corresponding dimensions of an actual figure or object. It helps to shrink vast lands and landscapes into small pieces of paper, like maps, and it also allows architects and machine-makers to work with models of machinery and structures that would be too large to hold if they were their actual size. A scale also has a direction, and the magnitude of the force it senses changes with movement. This is because force has a direction and can change with other forces such as acceleration. However, a scale does not measure these other forces, only the weight of gravity.

Acceleration

Acceleration is the change in velocity over a unit of time. It’s like the angry, fire-breathing dragon of motion variables — it demands attention and is a little scary, especially if you’re in a fast moving airplane or going around a curve at high speed in a go-kart. Acceleration is inversely proportional to mass, so the bigger the object, the more force it takes to accelerate it.

But a jet that moves at a constant velocity has no acceleration, because its speed is not changing. When an object’s acceleration is positive, it is moving upward or forward; when it is negative, it is slowing down or falling. The scales in an elevator are a good example of this. If the elevator is accelerating downward, the scale reading is greater than the person’s weight; but when it begins to accelerate upward, the scale exerts an upward force on the woman that is greater than her own weight.

Resistance

Resistance is the opposition to current flow within a wire, and it can vary by material, length, and cross-sectional area. It is also influenced by temperature, which changes the value of resistivity (the inverse of conductivity).

A material’s resistance is defined as its ability to restrict electrons from moving across it under the influence of voltage. A high resistance makes it difficult for current to flow, while a low resistance allows current to flow easily. The unit of measurement for resistance is ohms, named after Georg Simon Ohm, the German physicist who discovered the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance.

If a meter’s scale indicates ten volts, then one full-scale deflection of the needle requires only 10 mA of current. A meter’s movement resistance, the actual DC resistance of the wire coil in which it is embedded, reduces this amount to about half that value.

Use Measures when you need dynamic calculations that change with user actions like filtering or slicing. Use Calculated Columns when you want static values or when the calculations are too complex to be solved using measures.

Establishing metrics requires careful thought to ensure that they accurately quantify the goals you hope to achieve. They should also align with your organization’s vision.

Definition

Measures are the values that can be summed and/or averaged. Examples include sales, leads, distances, temperatures and weights. They are often used alongside dimensions, which are the categorical buckets that can be used to segment or filter the data.

Historically, the notion of a measurement has been a concrete one: any assigning of numbers to objects or events counts as measurement. This characterization fits a wide variety of perceptual and linguistic activities, but it is not broad enough to cover all scientific inquiry.

In mathematical terms, a measure is a countably additive set function with the properties sigma finiteness and finite additivity. For instance, the Lebesgue measure on a symplectic manifold is a measurement. A measure with negative values leads to signed measures (see the section on generalizations). Finitely additive measures are known as contents, and they have important applications in geometric measure theory. They are also associated with notions such as the Stone–Cech compactification and Banach limits.

Purpose

Measures are used to collect data, calculate values, and display them in a visual way. They can be qualitative or quantitative. In order to be useful, a measurement should be repeatable and timely. It should also be able to indicate critical trends.

Measurements are defined without reference to a physical object that serves as a standard. This is referred to as artifact-free definitions.

A good example is the kilogram, which is an artifact-free unit of weight. Other examples include the meter, candela, second, ampere, and kelvin.

Measures perform dynamic calculations on the fly and can be used across multiple visualizations and data sections. However, they require more memory to store and compute than calculated columns. To create a measure, select a table and click New measure in the Calculations group on the Power BI Desktop ribbon. Then enter a DAX formula in the formula bar. You can create a measure in any table, but it’s easier to find if you create it where you plan to use it.

Significance

In a data context, measures are raw numbers that can be summed and averaged to produce metrics, such as total sales or website traffic. Metrics are more specific and focus on outcomes, providing insights that can be taken into action.

In principle, a test of significance can detect a real signal in the noise produced by measurement error and other sources. However, the noise may be so great that it overwhelms the signal, and the resulting significance will be misleading.

To reduce this effect, researchers should ensure that their instruments and environments are as consistent as possible. This can be done by measuring the same quantities on multiple occasions to compare results, or by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for self-report measures. ICCs provide information about whether the variation between individuals in a sample is mainly due to measurement error or other factors. This is known as temporal stability. This is one of the epistemic criteria of scientific validity.

Implementation

In a business context, the term implementation is used to describe the rollout of plans and projects. This may include the development of new technologies, training employees, and obtaining funding. It also includes the use of new processes to reach desired goals and improve operational efficiency.

The number of measures available for measuring implementation outcomes has increased dramatically over the past two years. For example, the number of measures assessing feasibility, a measure that can predict whether an intervention will be successful, has doubled since 2015. However, the overall growth in measurement development is uneven among outcomes.

In order to move beyond the current state of measurement, quality measures must be developed in a similar manner as evidence-based interventions (EBIs). This requires that the constructs to be measured are defined and clearly communicated. In addition, the measurements should be based on sound psychometric criteria. This will enable us to understand the relationships between variables and their impact on implementation outcomes.

The air you breathe, the food you eat, and even the keyboard you type on have mass. Understanding how to measure these substances can give you greater insight into our everyday world.

The basic SI unit of mass is the kilogram, a cylinder of special metal that serves as the world’s standard. The second measurement of an object is its volume, which is the amount of space it takes up.

Weight

Although mass and weight may seem to have the same meaning, they are actually two very different physical properties. Mass is a measure of the amount of matter—the number and type of atoms that make up an object—whereas weight is a measurement of the force of gravity acting on the object.

It is important to distinguish between these properties as they are used in science and commerce. For example, a scale measures the “weight” of an object by measuring how much it pulls down on and stretches a spring. However, the same object would have a different weight on the Moon than on Earth because of the gravitational pull in a different frame of reference.

In routine laboratory use, the term weight is usually replaced with the word density when describing an object’s value in a high-precision scale or balance. In these cases, the precision scales are calibrated with a stainless steel standard to provide conventional mass measurements (true mass minus an unknown degree of buoyancy). This method is more accurate than using an arbitrary block of platinum for calibration, but it still depends on gravity in a different frame of reference.

Density

The density of a sample is its mass divided by its volume, a ratio that remains constant regardless of the size of the sample. It is an intensive property, and for this reason numerous analytical methods exist for measuring it. For liquid samples, for example, a volumetric flask with one marking that corresponds to a particular volume is filled up to the line and weighed.

Knowing how to measure density can help students and professionals across STEM fields understand the fundamental characteristics of matter at a variety of scales and volumes. Whether it’s comparing the weight of stainless steel and feathers or observing how oil floats in water, density is an essential concept in physics, chemistry, biology, geology and even cooking. It is, in fact, the principle that enables the Eureka moment celebrated by Archimedes. It is why, for instance, a dense block of metal will be heavier than an equal-sized piece of bread. This is why it’s important to master the skill of density measurement.

Velocity

Velocity is a key concept in physics, especially when it comes to motion. It is the combination of an object’s speed and direction that defines its kinetic energy, the amount of force it takes to accelerate an object. This is a result of the law of conservation of linear momentum, which states that an object’s total energy (kinetic plus potential) is equal to its mass times velocity.

Unlike speed, which is a scalar quantity that indicates distance per unit time, velocity is a vector quantity and requires both magnitude and direction. If an object’s velocity is changing, it must be accelerating.

Several methods can be used to measure fluid velocity, including optical Doppler velocimetry and acoustic Doppler velocimetry. Optical Doppler velocimetry is usually limited to fluids that are transparent, while acoustic Doppler spectroscopy is suitable for most liquids and gases. However, in some cases the temperature of a flowing fluid can cause heating and vaporization of the particles, which can affect the measurement.

Gravity

Gravity is the force that attracts matter toward the center of the earth. It is also the force that causes two spheres of identical mass to be attracted toward each other, with a magnitude proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Scientists have a variety of ways to measure gravity, including allowing objects to fall freely and measuring their acceleration. The rate of acceleration at a given location on the surface of the earth varies slightly from place to place, depending on latitude and features such as mountains or hills.

It is important to distinguish between mass and weight, which are not the same thing. A spring balance scale compares an object’s inertial mass to a standard reference weight held in Sevres, France. Engineers involved in disciplines requiring the measurement of weight loading (force on a structure due to gravity) convert an object’s mass into a force in newtons by using classic Newtonian laws.

Weighing process is a critical part of the manufacturing industry. It allows you to track and control level or inventory, batch weighing, ingredient blending, and mass flow rate.

Make sure to always use a clean weighing boat or paper to prevent contamination. It’s also important to keep the weights in a dry environment.

Accuracy

A scale’s accuracy is a combination of many factors, including its repeatability, linearity, and hysteresis. These specifications are important in ensuring that your scale meets the required tolerances and meets your application’s needs.

The most critical component of any electronic weighing system is the load cell. This is a piece of machined metal that bends with the mechanical force applied to it and converts that force into a proportional electrical signal. The signal is then used by the weighing instrumentation to display and record the weight of the material.

Load cells can be susceptible to damage from shock loading, which occurs when a large quantity of material is dumped on the weighing platform. To avoid shock loading, you can use a feeder or specially designed load chute to control the flow of material onto the weighing platform. You can also reduce the impact of shock loads on your system’s resolution by selecting a load cell with a higher rated capacity.

Safety

Weighing is an essential part of food production. It helps ensure that all ingredients are distributed evenly, so the finished product tastes the same in every batch. It also helps ensure quality compliance and product recipe specifications. For food companies, weighing accuracy is especially crucial in preventing contamination.

Safe weighing in hazardous industrial environments requires a combination of precision instruments and comprehensive safety protocols. By implementing best practices and fostering a culture of safety, businesses can protect their most valuable assets: their employees.

The most important step in ensuring safety is to make sure that your equipment is appropriate for the environment. For example, you should use a scale or balance designed for hazardous areas. These devices are equipped with intrinsic safety circuits that limit the amount of energy they can release during a malfunction or fault condition. They also must be inspected and calibrated regularly to prevent inaccurate readings and potential sparks. Moreover, they should be tested with the appropriate flammable material to confirm their integrity.

Efficiency

In addition to reducing costs through less wasted raw materials and rework, accurate measurements also contribute to workplace safety. This is particularly important when handling hazardous chemicals, which must be handled with care to avoid potential accidents. Using automated weighing systems allows for safe, accurate batching of different materials, minimizing errors and preventing spills.

A precise weighing process ensures that production batches adhere to strict quality standards, helping businesses meet customer demands and maintain their reputation. It also helps reduce inventory costs and prevent overstocking or stockouts, allowing companies to maximize operational efficiency.

Choosing the correct method for a specific application depends on contamination concerns, precision requirements, and the environment in which the weighing process will take place. Weighing by difference is a great choice for applications where accuracy and contamination control are top priorities, while weighing by counting pieces and counting by adding are better suited to scenarios that require speed and simplicity. Regular balance validation also protects the integrity of weighing instruments and contributes to efficient operation by ensuring that only calibrated instruments are used for weighing processes.

Cost

Weighing processes are an essential part of the production process for many industries. They help ensure that products meet quality standards, reduce waste, and increase efficiency. This makes industrial weighing an important part of the manufacturing and logistics industries. However, implementing automated weighing systems can be complex and expensive. To ensure successful implementation, it is necessary to carefully evaluate current processes and identify areas where automation could be beneficial.

Choosing the right weighing system for your business is crucial to ensuring accuracy and reliability. Depending on your needs, you can choose between Direct Weighing and Weighing by Difference. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.

The cost of a weighing system can vary depending on its features and specifications. For example, advanced calibration mechanisms and environmental protection features can increase the cost of a scale. Other factors that impact cost include load cell technology and integration capabilities.

Controlling weight can improve your health and help prevent or treat some conditions. It may also reduce your risk of developing other health problems and diseases, such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

Cravings for sweet or salty foods and drinks can come from many sources, including afternoon lulls, boredom, or stress. Try to satisfy these cravings with nutrient-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low fat proteins.

Sleep

Research shows that sleep is associated with the production and regulation of hormones that affect appetite. For example, a lack of sleep increases the levels of neurotransmitters called ghrelin and leptin — hormones that stimulate hunger and satiety. This imbalance leads to overeating and weight gain. Studies show that people who increase their sleep duration can decrease the levels of ghrelin and leptin and increase the level of leptin, which helps them feel full. In addition, those who sleep longer have a tendency to conserve energy-dense body fat and have less weight gain than those who sleep less.1

This is why it is important to get adequate amounts of restful sleep.

Stress Management

Identifying and tackling your stressors is essential to improving mental and physical health. If you’re not already, start keeping a stress diary to understand how your daily routine affects you. Recognizing warning signs, such as tense muscles and headaches, can help you take action.

Studies show that chronic stress, which can be long-lasting and often cumulative, contributes to weight gain and a variety of health problems. One such health risk is abdominal fat accumulation, which increases your risk for cardiovascular diseases (Chaplin & Smith 2011).

A recent study showed that people who participated in an eight-week stress management program versus a control group lost more weight and saw improvements on measures of perceived stress, depression, and quality of life. Participants in the stress management group also displayed better compliance with dietary instructions than those in the control group. One technique for managing stress is biofeedback, a process of monitoring body functions such as heart rate and muscle tension with the aim of influencing how your body responds to stress.

A scale is an arrangement of pitch classes. It is an essential component of a map as it allows for the transformation of positions on the spherical Earth to positions on flat maps.

Scale development consists of several steps, including domain identification and item generation. The resulting pool of items must then be reduced through tests of dimensionality and evaluation for content validity.

Definition

Scale is a ratio that represents the relationship between dimensions on a model and the corresponding dimensions of an actual figure or object. It helps in representing real-world objects on paper with comparatively smaller dimensions. Scales are most commonly used in maps and blueprints for construction of buildings.

Scales are also used in physics, geometry, and music. For example, scales in physics allow measurement of distances and area using a graduated line. In geometry, a scale is a set of rules that governs the size of geometric figures and shapes.

In music, a scale is a fixed sequence of musical notes built relative to a single root note and ordered in pitch. Various scales have different personalities, which makes them worth learning depending on the kind of music you like to play.

Filmmakers use proportion to create scale within a shot composition. For example, they can proportion a statue with its surrounding people to make the statue look larger.

Meaning

A scale is a graduated series, as on a map, that represents proportional sizes. The word is also used as a verb, meaning to enlarge something to a greater or lesser degree. For example, to “scale a mountain” means to climb it at a proportionately larger height.

In music, a scale is the set of interval patterns that define a particular musical octave; it is usually indicated by its name and a choice of a tonic, which is the starting point of its adopted interval pattern. The tonic of the C major scale is, of course, C.

A scale can be augmented or diminished according to modulation, which is systematic changing from one scale to another in a conventionalized manner. For example, the major mode pieces of a classical composer may modulate from a diatonic tonal scale to an auxiliary diminished scale a fifth above the tonic. A scale can also be described by its syllables: the movable do solfege naming system for the seven notes of a major scale is usually called a melodic scale.

Origin

The term scale can be applied to a variety of things: a series that climbs up or down, as in a musical scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-ti-do); a system for determining body weight, such as the one depicted in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead; or a balance scale, which is commonly used for weighing merchandise. Scales have been used as a symbol of commerce since ancient times, and they are often found on the seals of government departments and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 1669, the Frenchman Gilles Personne de Roberval presented a new kind of scale. Unlike previous scales that required a counterweight or peg, his new scale was self-balancing and could be moved anywhere on its parallelogram. The new scale was a revolutionary improvement over earlier types of balance scales, and it later evolved into the more common form that we use today. A variation of this scale, the microbalance, can measure very small masses with great accuracy.

Applications

Scale is used to represent a ratio in geometry, drawing, architecture and engineering. It is also used to shrink or magnify objects to make them easier to see, like when creating blueprints for machinery or buildings. It can also be used to create maps by reducing the size of land masses to show their relative sizes.

Traditional mechanical balance-beam scales use two plates suspended at equal distances from a fulcrum to determine mass or weight. Since the force of gravity varies over the surface of the Earth, these scales need to be calibrated for each location.

Other scales may be constructed from elastically deformable arms or from a sliding frictionless rod. These can have an advantage over center-beam scales in that they do not require the use of a fixed set of reference masses, and their calibration is simpler because the deformation of the arm or rod can be measured. This type of scale is called a hybrid scale.

As part of quality improvement, measurement helps healthcare professionals make decisions based on data. When done well, it can also help them feel confident in those decisions and move away from anecdotes and one person’s view of the world.

In mathematics, a measure is a functional on a locally convex Riemannian manifold. Lebesgue measures are s-finite and generalize to a more general form called the Hausdorff measure.

Units of Measure

A measurement is a number that identifies a physical quantity. A measurement cannot be conveyed without the underlying units of measure, and different systems are used for measuring different quantities.

The metric system is the most widely used, but there are other systems as well. The metric system is based on a small number of basic units, each of which has a defined meaning and all of the other measures are related to these base units by powers of 10.

For example, the unit for length is the metre (symbol m), but it can be derived from other units as well. These include the foot, ounce, and gallon. In the United States, US customary units are still heavily used despite a partial move to metrication. Frequently it is necessary to perform calculations on measurements that use different units, and these can be converted using conversion factors. The results of these calculations should be reported in both the original unit and the resulting unit.

Measurement Concepts

A measurement is an empirical process that produces quantitative information about a physical property of objects. It must be both an empirical transformation and a designed process in order to be called a measurement.

This characterization of measurement aims to differentiate it from other types of designed processes, such as computation and logical inference, or from thought experiments that produce values but are not designed. In particular, it aims to distinguish measurement from processes such as manufacturing that are designed to transform inputs into outputs according to production plans, but which are not necessarily measurements.

It also aims to distinguish measurement from counting and the estimation of quantities that can be calculated in other ways, such as by adding up known values (like the number of blocks and dogs in a collection) or by subtracting one value from another (like the difference between distances and weights). In addition, it seeks to establish necessary but not sufficient conditions for a process to be identified as a measurement.

Measurement Instruments

Measurement instruments are tools that help us assign a known standardized numerical value to some property of an object or event. These measurement instruments may be mechanical, chemical, electrical or optical.

Various factors can cause errors in measurement. Some of these are related to the instrument itself, such as sensitivity drift and calibration. Other factors are related to the person using the instrument, such as operator error or environmental conditions during the measurement.

Researchers use many different instruments in the study of a range of variables, from physical functioning to psychosocial well being. The instruments vary in format from formal questionnaires to observational tools. The Library has collections of measurement tools, both published in books and available online. These include rating scales, tests and questionnaires arranged by topic. The PsycInfo database also contains a thesaurus of terms that helps in finding tests and ratings scales by name, synonyms and broader or narrower words. This can be useful to researchers looking for specific test items that are correlated with constructs they are studying.

Measurement Uncertainty

Measurement uncertainty is the statistical dispersion of values that may be attributed to a measured quantity. It is important to note that measurement uncertainty always has a positive value and can be determined using statistics or comparative interlaboratory comparisons/suitability tests.

The difference between error and uncertainty is that error refers to a single discrepancy while uncertainty is the effect of many errors acting conjointly. When a measurand y is calculated from other input quantities x1, x2,… xn through a functional relationship, uncertainties in those input quantities will propagate through the calculation to produce an uncertainty in y. This is the principle behind a common technique called the GUM (General Rules for the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement) methodology. The GUM provides the general rules for evaluating and expressing measurement uncertainty for functions that contain multiple input quantities including correction factors. It is important to know how to calculate this type of measurement uncertainty correctly. This will ensure that you get the most accurate and precise results possible.

The first step in measuring an object’s mass is to collect all its dimensions. This includes length, which metrologists (or measurement experts) use to derive other measurements such as volume.

Unlike weight, which changes due to gravity, mass remains the same no matter where an object is. It’s a property of matter based on its atomic and molecular makeup.

Definition

Mass is a physical property of matter. It is determined by the atomic and molecular makeup of an object. For example, a pine tree has more mass than a baseball bat, because it is made up of more atoms.

The basic unit for measuring mass is the kilogram (kg). A regular-sized paperclip has a mass of about 1 gram.

Measuring mass is usually done by using a balance scale. The unknown mass is placed on one side of the scale and its value is obtained by comparing it with a known quantity. This type of scale is unaffected by changes in gravity.

The kilogram became a standard measurement unit in the metric system when it was introduced in 1875. Since then, a number of other base units have been defined, such as the meter for lengths, the stere for areas, and the litre for liquid capacities. These derived units are all related to the kilogram through factors of powers of 10. The kilogram is still defined by an artifact, the International Prototype Kilogram, which is a metal cylinder stored in the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States.

Concepts

The basic unit for mass is kilogram, or kg. This SI unit, along with metre (100 cm) for length, aretonne (one hundred ares) for area, stere (1 m3) for dry capacity and litre (one dm3) for liquid capacity make up the standard metric system of units used worldwide.

A balance is the most common tool used to measure an object’s mass. It compares the unknown object’s weight with that of a known mass to determine an object’s relative gravitational weight. This method of mass measurement works even in places without gravity since changes in gravitational acceleration affect both masses equally.

To help students understand that weight and mass are different concepts and measurements, try letting them hold a pen and a bottle of water in each hand. They should realize that the bottle of water feels heavier than the pen because it has more mass. Using a scale, they can then measure the objects’ respective masses.

Examples

Most people are familiar with measuring the weight of items using a scale or balance. What many people don’t know is that these balances can also measure mass directly.

The basic SI unit of mass is the kilogram, kg, though smaller masses are often measured in grams (g). Mass may be measured with a lab instrument like the triple beam balance pictured below, or it can be calculated from an object’s density and its volume.

One of the most important examples of mass is an individual human’s weight, which depends on the gravitational pull of the Earth. An identical body would weigh less on Mars or more on Saturn, because gravity there is different. However, its mass would be the same on all planets because it is a property of matter. This is why it’s essential to understand the difference between mass and weight! Mass and weight are very similar, so it’s easy to confuse the two.

Applications

In laboratory work, mass measurements are important for many fields. For example, chemical engineers often convert mass data to a force (measured in newtons) to determine the amount of energy required to move an object. This calculation is based on the principle that mass and weight are related: an object’s mass is proportional to the gravitational acceleration exerted on it.

Other examples include forensic analysis (e.g., trace evidence in arson cases), food contamination testing, pesticide residue analysis, protein identification and carbon dating. In biochemistry, high-resolution mass spectrometry can be used to characterize oligomerization and aggregation of biological molecules, measure stoichiometries in reactions, and quantify molecular interactions (Soltermann, et al. 2021).

NIST is working with Snap-on Inc. to develop a tabletop version of our Kibble balance for use in the field, allowing the Army to eliminate the need to send equipment to NIST for mass calibrations that are directly traceable to the SI kilogram standard. The collaboration demonstrates NIST’s commitment to making mass measurement easier and more accessible to military and civilian users.