Just how exactly does a scientist go about measuring really, really, ridiculously big forces with accuracy and precision? Well, they need the world’s largest weight.
The people behind the Veritasium YouTube channel got a look at the world’s largest weight which is held at NIST and clocks in at an astronomical 4,448,2228 Newtons. To contextualize that a little bit, a single apple weighs ~1 Newton and the Saturn V Rocket which sent astronauts to the moon had a thrust of 33,360,000 Newtons….This machine is capable of 4,448,222 Newtons which is the equivalent of 1 MILLION pounds of force…By the way, to all you physicists and field scientists out there I wholeheartedly apologize for butchering weight/force/thrust, it has been at least 15 years since I last took a Physics course.
In order to measure that force accurately, the force of the Saturn V rocket, you need insanely heavy weights like this one above. If you’ve already fallen asleep while reading this then chances are you’re not much of a textbook learner and prefer visual learning, so I’ll just let you bros watch the video instead of regurgitating everything said by the Veritasium crew.