Waterbury Democrat., 1900-11-03
ABOUT OUR WEIGHT.
Component Parts of Our Bodies
 Not Measured by Scales.
GeAs BsisntiAs Yasts Whish Are Net Commonly Known Regarding tho
 Eject of the EartA's Revelu- tioRs in Our Weight.


 stopping at certain point. tells you that your weight is so many pounds. You know by this, in sort of com parative way, says the Pittsburgh Times, that there is certain amount of the matter which composes the universe confined under your skin. You have appropriated certain DOT tion of it in the construction of youf flesh and bones. There is definite amount of the elements combined to- gether which produces an effect upon the machine, and that effect is trans- lated into pounds. You do not know exactly what pound is, but it is some sort of an arbitrary measure of the force of gravitation, and, after reading the figures on the scale, you know how much there is of you by comparison with other objects that have weight and density.
 When you stand outside of yourself there seems to be no reason why you should have any weight. The mind, which is the most important part of you, does not appear to have weight, is matter entirely outside of yourself; you cannot increase or diminish it by any act of will, though sometimes in dreams you seem to have divested your body of the down. ward pull, which you call weight, and find yourself floating as easily as a mote in sunbeam. It may be that this is sort of recollection on the part of the matter which enters into our composition of a time when it was really not subject to this tuggins called grovitation, and hoated free. In our present environment, however, this law of matter has us in full con- trol and we cannot escape it for the smallest fraction of a second. It op- crates steadily all the time and we are obliged always to take it into ac. count.
 But does the scale actually tell ua how much we weigh? It simply call culates the balance between tho forces that are working against each other, the one tending to drag us down to the center of the earth and the other to send us spinning out into space. The pull of gravitation has the advantage by so man. pounds; otherwise we should leave our happy homes in a hurry and start on 8 journey from which we
 
 space to hobnob with comets and as- teroids and other celestial wanderers. This old earth is whirler and twirler. It has more curves than a baseball in the hands of an expert pitcher. You have seen the experi- nent of swinging a pail of water over the head without spilling the water. The earth is giving us the same sort of a swing.
 It is as If some giant were sta- ition0d at the point of space where the center of the earth is, with string upward of 5000 miles in length attached to us, and were swinging us around at the end of it. This rate of circular motion is approxima tely 1000 miles an hour. It is a pretty rapid swing, and the fact that on account oi this rapidity we have a considerable tendency to take a long jump sev- eral thousand miles into space must make considerable difference in the pressure when we step on the weighing machine.
 If the earth were to stop its whir1- ing some day for Q short time we should all suddenly become heavy weights, and it is a question whether the ordinary weighin. machine would be adequate to measure the tendency which our bodies would have to press toward the center of the earth. It is plain, therefore, that we should weigh a good deal more if it wasn't for the giant swing given us by the planet upon which we are involuntary resi- dents.
 In order to tell our real weight it would seem, therefore, that it is necessary to calculate how much of the force of gravitation is counter acted by this circular motion and the constant tendency to fly off at tangent. But, after all, this would not really indicate our weight. There is law of physics which tells us that matter attracts according to it's mass. Now, suppose that you were to take journey to some world that had only 1-1ooth of the mass of this, then, when you had stepped upon the weighing machine and dropped in your penny, according to that law you would weigh but 1-1ooth of the amount indicated by the machines around Pittsburgh. If you weigh 150 pounds here you would weigh but a pouNu auu U Hall there. lou WOulu be decidedly Tn the feather-weight class, could repose comfortably on the hardest board and with the same strength of limb that you now pos sess could leap over ten-story build ing or skip across wide river.
 It really looks as if we did not weigh anything at all and as if what we call weight was only an incident to our surroundings. We are citizens of the universe, but for the present we are living on the planet called Earth, and we are adjusted to the con- ditions here. We are subject to certain amount of pull by our earth mother, but if at any time we acquire the power to journey to other earths and other planets the scales will tell different story, though there may be no change in the amount of matter composing our bodies. Our weight just happens to be so many pounds