It does take some practice getting the thing straight, but at least paper clips are fairly cheap and abundant. This, of course, starts with a flattened paper clip. So the idea is that if we flatten out our paper clip, we can turn it into a lever arm that will help us weigh our water. However, for an ideal spring, the stretch distance is linearly proportional to the stretching force, and that might not be true with a bending paper clip. This is very similar to the force required to stretch a spring, which is much harder to deform than a straight wire. However, when it’s curled up into its normal paper clip shape, it is much more difficult to fold. If you have straightened a paper clip out into a long wire, the more you push on one end, the more it bends. (It's true- check it out.) In this case, we can determine the weight (and thus the mass) of something by measuring the deflection of a paper clip, or how much it bends. So how do you measure weight? It turns out that most of our measurement tools are actually for measuring distance. What's the difference between mass and weight? Here is my full explanation, but the short answer is that mass is the amount of matter (protons, neutrons, electrons) a thing is made of, and weight is the gravitational force exerted on that object by the Earth. Since we are on the surface of the Earth, there is a constant relationship between mass and weight-so we are technically going to measure the water’s weight. Remember, the goal here is to measure the mass of some water.
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