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Weight of a Juggler



I was feeling groggy and needy to get out of my seat for a few minutes, so I decided to do an experiment to confirm an old thought problem. I got the Vernier force plate (looks and works kind of like an electronic bathroom scale) and three 0.5 kg masses and started juggling. I juggled at different rates, but I didn't try different masses yet (partly because 0.5 kg was the heaviest set of matched objects I could find in a shape that I could reasonable handle).

The initial data is summarized here.

rate mean st.dev.
0 Hz 878 N 0.9
1.5 Hz 880 N 57.7
2.4 Hz 873 N 40.4
4.4 Hz 880 N 25.8

0 Hz is standing still holding the 3 x 0.5 kg masses. So the answer is indeed "no", the average weight doesn't decrease when you are juggling three objects instead of holding them! Also no surprise is that the slow juggling (which means a few big throws) had the biggest variation in force.

If there is interest, I could give a few more details - or email the original files (contact me at folkertst@bartonccc.edu). I'm thinking of expanding this into an article for TPT, so if you can think of other ideas to incorporate, I'd be interested in any suggestions.

Tim F