Back in October of '25, I did a post that I called, A Simple Experiment. For that experiment, I weighed a string of Buckyball magnets on our digital kitchen scale. My question was, how much would the same magnets weigh if I balanced them vertically on the scale, and put the top of the string into the magnet field of a powerful magnet suspended above them? In other words, how much of the total weight of the string would be supported by the overhead magnet?
What I found, to my disappointment, was that the kitchen scale was not accurate enough to give me a reading. I'd need a better scale.
The other day, I was thinking about the experiment and decided to buy a proper scale. The one I chose was a jeweler's scale, which has a maximum weight limit of 20 grams and measures to thousandths of a gram.
This post will show you the results of that trial.
These are the magnets I plan to balance on the jeweler's scale. They are on our kitchen scale in this picture. I wanted the big spherical magnet on top because I like the way it looks, almost hovering in mid air. And because it's heavy. It probably makes up most of the 57 grams.
This is the arrangement. You can see a bit of the powerful neodymium (N42) magnet in the decorated box above the balanced string. The string of magnets is resting on the jeweler's scale.
Do you want to make a guess on the apparent weight before you go further?
