[HN Gopher] Passive damping - Bathroom scales
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Passive damping - Bathroom scales
        
       Author : surprisetalk
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2024-09-09 15:58 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thinking-about-science.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thinking-about-science.com)
        
       | Syzygies wrote:
       | Most consumer bathroom scales are programmed to report exactly
       | the same reading twice in a row, when the reading is close.
       | 
       | Passive damping may be smart, but stupid always wins.
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | Interesting. Mine consistently shaves off ~2 pounds if I weigh
         | myself twice in quick succession.
        
       | rainbowzootsuit wrote:
       | Often I see these mixed up:
       | 
       | Damping is restraining oscillation.
       | 
       | Dampening is making something wet.
        
       | amluto wrote:
       | I've never taken apart a bathroom scale or tried to measure any
       | of the above, but my intuition is that this article completely
       | misses the point. Bathroom scales don't deform a whole lot, and
       | humans are squishy! When you take a running leap onto a
       | playground swing, you are part of an oscillating pendulum. When
       | you step onto a scale, sure, there will be a transient, but there
       | will also be a whole lot of noise as you balance, wiggle,
       | breathe, etc, and I bet the latter is dominates the former.
       | 
       | A self-respecting bathroom scale (not the kind that is
       | intentionally biased to read the same number twice in a row) acts
       | like a moderately low-pass-filtered sensor. As you move a bit,
       | _the number changes_.
       | 
       | So the scale is averaging over time, not waiting for some very
       | stiff internal spring to stop oscillating.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-11 23:00 UTC)