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Treasure/The Pan Balance

Every issue, we invite one member of the college community to share their delight in an object found on campus. Here, Michael Olson (Physics) comments on the pan balance and the immeasurable impact it has had. 

There’s nothing hidden in this device. This is, literally, a physical balance that you would have had to adjudicate by eye. There’s much more interplay between the experimenter and the device than there is with an electronic balance. You have to understand how the device works. There’s a great deal of analog machining: This is the high art of the instrument maker. Minus a small nick or two, this one is in pristine condition. It could be brought back into use — and it would be very interesting to compare it to an electronic balance where the sample is placed on the pan and a number simply appears on the screen.

It’s a very mundane device but it would have been used in the laboratories that created our modern world. The number of chemists and physicists who would have been trained using this device is immense. Its value to science is in the incalculable amount of research that it made possible.

Jan. 24, 2024