I have a reputation for getting into ridiculous situations. I swear that this one isn't real, just the product of a thought experiment: I'm wet and cold, wearing only swimming trunks and a climbing harness. I'm in a wheelie bin full of water that's balanced precariously on a plank. There's spilled water everywhere. I'm desperately trying to reach the jack handle of an engine hoist that's attached to my harness, to lift me vertically out of the wheelie bin.
I'm a bit worried about my weight, but I don't know what my target weight should be, so I'd like to know how much muscle and how much fat I'm carrying. I can weigh myself easily enough and measure my height, but I'd need to know my volume to work out my density. Obviously that would be done by submerging myself and measuring how much water is displaced. If I had a bath I could make a couple of marks on the side of it with wax pencil - one for the water level when I'm completely covered and another one when I'm out of it. Then it would simply be matter of counting how many buckets of water it takes to fill it back up to the top mark. I don't have a bath, nor waterproof pencil, nor goggles to see where I'm making the top mark when I'm underwater.
I do have a wheelie bin, and I'm pretty sure I could fit in it. It would seem to be much simpler to fill it to the brim, then get in it, and measure how much water was displaced. I couldn't sweep all the spilled water up off the garage floor well enough to measure it, but I could weigh the bin it before and after. My bathroom scales don't go up far enough to cope with a wheelie bin full of water, but that's easily dealt with. We'll put a scaffold plank on a paving stone at one end and the bathroom scales at the other. The wheelie bin will be on the plank 20% of the way from the stone to the scales. A little applied maths will tell of the actual weight.
The only problem that remains is getting in and out of the water filled wheelie bin without tipping it over and without getting stuck.
Richard "apparently a gym can do this more easily" B
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