How to increase a computers weight


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It actually does, there are more electrons on the disk if 1 is written to it completely (compared to 0) and as electrons have mass the drive will be heavier.

I don't think that your explanation is correct. But I do know that theoretically there might be some weight shift (and in flash drives an actual weight increase I think), although I have no idea how to calculate it ;).

However I'm also quite sure that the yahoo question wasn't about this theoretical weight difference ;)

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It actually does, there are more electrons on the disk if 1 is written to it completely (compared to 0) and as electrons have mass the drive will be heavier.

Actually no, hard disks store the bits by flipping the magnetic moment and ultimately the electron spins of small regions on the platter. The entropy of the platter probably increases as you write to a formatted disk but I don't think there's any interaction that contributes energy or mass to the disk.

And that discover article is specious - you could just as well store the internet with arbitrarily light photons and it would weigh even less.

So I don't think it's a terrible question when the answer isn't obvious to some people.

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Ah I always wondered why my computer jumps up and down whilst the hard drive and ram are being used. It is all the weight shifting around as 1 are changed to 0 and vice versa. :jump:

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