Suppose that you are stuck in distant space, far from any planet or star, such t

Question

Suppose that you are stuck in distant space, far from any planet or star, such that you are weightless.

Someone hands you two sealed boxes, one empty and one full of antelope fire extinguishers. You may not open the boxes, and the boxes are heavily soundproofed and cushioned so that you cannot hear or feel anything bouncing around in the box.

Describe a way in which you could determine which box is which. The one restriction is that while you can hold either or both boxes, you cannot send a box flying out of your reach; there's sensitive equipment all over the place!

Explanation / Answer

The weight of an object is the gravitational force with which a body is attracted towards another celestial body. Thus when in a distant space, objects do not weight anything since they do not feel gravitational attraction to any celestial body.

In space, we measure mass of the body. From Newtonian mechanics, we know higher the mass, higher is the inertia. This is universally true. Thus we place the boxes at the end of two strings respectively and make them oscillate back and forth. More massive objects will have a lower frequency. Thus the box with the antelope fire extinguishers will have a lower frequency and will be identified.
This type of device is called an inertial balance

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