Introducing...

This is George and Gracie. They just came in the mail on Friday. They are actually for work and not home use. I usually have two in my classroom, but one was stolen earlier in the year. The older model was actually smaller and all black including a black pan which blended in too nicely on black lab counters. Me and my chickens tend to forget to put the balances away at night and they were just small enough to slide into a backpack. The new ones are larger and will stand out a little more on the counters. There are those on the market that have a feature that will allow you to lock the balance to something. The problem is that those ones cost about 4x as much. Let's see, public school.... it's cheaper just to buy a new one every year. So, I was left with one balance and it met an untimely death last week when a student moved the cord to plug in their laptop. Student tripped over cord and there went my balance. Again, cheaper to buy new (and faster) than get the old one fixed.

So why are they named? It is important to use the same balance for the duration of an experiment. If I remember to put the balances away at night during a two-day experiment, I need to know which one is which. Not sure if the act of moving the balances negates this idea or not. George and Gracie sounds much better than A and B. I even had fun making the labels and learned how easy cropping can be with a tablet PC.

George and Gracie came from HBI Technologies, which is wholesale only, but they do have links to authorized sellers online. Both measure to 0.01 g and cost less than $100/each.