Azy put a 10 g weight on a pan balance How many 1 g weight does he need to balance the scale

Answer 1

I think first of all we should make sure you understand what this problem is asking you to do.

10g means 10 grams. Grams are a way to measure the weight of something. 10 grams is a tiny amount, but it doesn't even matter. We could have said 10 ounces, or 10 pounds even. As long as we choose one unit and stick to it, this problem will work. So let's switch to pounds, because you're probably more familiar with those.

The problem mentions a "pan balance". That's just a balance, one of those things with two plates that balance each other out, like the justice statue holds. In order for the plates to be balanced (so neither one goes up higher or down lower than the other one), you need to have the same weight on each plate. Remember, we were told that Azy already put some weight on one of the plates: a 10g (10 pounds in our example) weight.

This just means that Azy grabbed a big, heavy block of probably metal and placed it on one of the plates. As it turns out, Azy has no more big, heavy blocks of metal. He only has small ones, so the balance is not balanced: the plate with the heavy weight has gone down much lower than the other one.

However, Azy has a whole bunch of small weights! The small weights only weight 1g (one gram, or one pound in our example), so they're a lot less heavy that the big 10-pound block. How many 1-pound blocks would weigh as much as the big 10-pound block? Well, the weights just add up like numbers do, so he'd need 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 small blocks to make up the weight of the big one. That is, he'd need 10 small blocks (count them!) to make up the weight of the big block.

Answer 2

Let's try to visualize this, we will use "g" to help us see it.

First, a pan balance/scale looks like this: https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwjiiLmixsf6AhX3Eq0GHf8MDkYYABANGgJwdg&ae=2&sig=AOD64_3F72-skvaHkcfSapxVcr7JKe3E-g&adurl&ctype=5&ved=2ahUKEwiz36Sixsf6AhUi8lMKHQGQD4cQvhd6BQgBEJEB

So, we are told there are 10 "g"s on one side:

ggggg =

ggggg

How many "g"s would need to go on the other side so both sides are the same? 10!

We want it to look like:

ggggg = ggggg

ggggg ggggg