World's Heaviest Weight

How do you measure big forces accurately? By calibrating your force transducer on the world's biggest weight - 1,000,000 pounds of force. This machine ensures planes don't break apart, jets provide required thrust, and rockets make it to their destination.

Thanks to the people at NIST for showing me around: Rick Seifarth and Ben Stein. Animations here are by Sean Kelley and additional footage by Jennifer Lauren Lee.

Special thanks to Patreon Supporters:
Tony Fadell, Donal Botkin, Jeff Straathof, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal, Nathan Hansen

Before visiting NIST in Washington DC I had no idea machines like this existed. Surely there's an accurate way to measure forces without creating such a huge known force?! Nope. This appears to be the best way, with a stack of 20 x 50,000 lb masses creating a maximum force of 4.45 MN or 1,000,000 pounds of force. I also wouldn't have thought about all the corrections that need applying - for example buoyancy subtracts about 125 pounds from the weight of the stack. Plus the local gravitational field strength must be taken into account. And, the gravitational field varies below grade. All of this must be taken into account in order to limit uncertainty to just five parts per million (.0005%)

[dugroz]

That guy has the perfect voice for his job.

[therealtampadude]

That guy has one of the coolest jobs in the world. He's a real heavy metal fan.

[wavedog]

"Okay so how do we get to space?"
"What if we threw 33 and a half million apples at the same time?"

[NerfedOnGod]

"An apple weighs about 1 newton"

Top 5 things that make sense

[xoiyoub]

"An apple weighs about 1 Newton. The world record for jet engine thrust..."
That escalated quickly

[scepticalgerman]

And everyone knows that the PE teachers grandma can lift this

[crasher]

the fact that they take into account the weight of the air and some how figure out a correction for the gravity constant at their particular location on earth blew my mind.

[VanLifeByTheRiver]

There’s no doubt in my mind that man carries around “several American nickels” in his pocket at all times.

[MidNightStudiosFilms]

"One physical test is worth a thousand expert opinions" that's such a brilliant quote.

[johnnyparente]

That guy was absurdly personable. I feel it would be easy to get him going and get lost in his world.

[lewismocaby]

This was extremely cool. The last job I worked on had a ringer crane manufactured by Lampson with a 750, 000 lb lifting capacity mounted to a barge with a million lb counterweight. I unloaded trucks one whole summer of crane parts and counterweight. Spent a whole winter and spring assembling the crane and mounting it to the barge with nearly the whole summer used for rigging the barge and testing it. Spent a few years off and on either working on that crane barge or with it and although fascinating at times, working with the same rig day in and day out loses its luster pretty quickly. Our load cells consisted of potentiometers mounted perpendicular to the barge deck along with a load cell mounted to the end of a 7/8” cable at the main lifting line on the block. The main lifting block was usually rigged as either 32 parts of line or 16 parts while having to constantly take it all apart and reassemble it to add and remove boom sections for different projects throughout the duration of the job. Our load cells were sent off on a pretty standard basis for recalibrations and updates but remember a couple of occasions when the interns from engineering had mentioned the facility in this video. Not positive if our cells were sent to this particular facility or not as we had equipment from all over the world though quite a bit of our electronics came from Sweden initially, though when recalibrated they were all done stateside as far as the equipment I dealt with. Again it’s really interesting to see this technology and the math that goes along with it to help take away variables and make things more concrete as it applies to everyday things in the construction side of things along with the safety factor it adds to so many different aspects in industry. 👍

[vinhpham]

Finally something i can bench press. Our battle will be legendary

[MrDanishbuttercookie]

I wanna put stuff under it and make a YouTube channel out of it

[antondelacruz]

That dude was a great interviewee. Knowdgeable, amiable, and proud of his institution.

[tbonemadeit]

FINE ILL WATCH IT YOUTUBE THANKS FOR PUTTING IT IN MY RECOMMENDED DAILY FOR 2 YEARS

[robinvictor]

For Americans: 1 million pounds! that's heavy
For brits : no, that's expensive

[tt]

Eddie Hall: "So anyway, I started squatting"

[H.A.R.D.B.O.I.L.E.D]

1, 000, 000 pounds, wow...that's a lot of money

[sylvestermemia]

As a metrologist in Kenya in the Mass and derived quantities category I have such an appreciation for what he is doing. And as an Engineer by training to see that stack upto rockets being launched by crazy forces makes one feel proud of Science as whole

[deadspeedv]

"One physical test is worth a thousand expert opinions". I like that quote.