Weighing Things Up

We think we’ve found a suitable lamp for the living room but as it’s quite heavy, we need to know whether we’ll be able to hang it from the ceiling. Fortunately, there is already a hook in the ceiling so it’s possible to test this before we buy the lamp.

But how to do the testing? The lamp we’re thinking of could weigh up to 10 kg. So we need something similar in weight that won’t make a mess if it falls. We’ve still got all kinds of heavy stuff from the work: sand, plaster, gravel. But all of this will make a real mess… but water is also heavy, and the metric system makes it pretty easy to work out how much you need because one litre of water weighs exactly one kilo, so ten litres weighs ten kilos.

But, more importantly, and I only thought of this this morning, the lower things hang the less distance they have to fall. Time to use some of the polypropylene rope that’s been hanging at the back of the house for years.

So, slip the rope around the hook and hang the bucket, as low as possible but high enough for the rope to stretch with the weight. The use a watering can to gently add water…

Okay, I didn’t do everything in this order but these are the thoughts I had during and after, and disaster avoided. 10 kg should be no problem. But considering how things tend to shake when the trains go by, 5 kg is probably a safer bet!