Physics Sensing Coursework: Electronic Balance

... Plan I plan to design, make and test a device for measuring the weight of an object using a potential divider, so as the weight of the object increases or decreases, so the voltage measured across part of the potential divider increases or decreases. There are several ways in which I could accomplish this, and all of them rely on the elastic deformation of a material according to Hooke's Law. Rotary Resistor Sliding Resistor (1) Sliding Resistor (2) Of the possible balances I have considered constructing, sliding resistor (1) is the balance that I will construct as it is the balance with which the relationship between applied load and movement of the resistor is most easily understandable as all movement occurs along the same plane. The rotary potentiometer will not move a constant amount with each applied vertical load as it rotates, this will not give a straight line graph of results and will complicate matters

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