Not meaning to hijack this thread or anything, but I bought some
mid-price digital scales a few weeks ago (made by Kenwood, max 3kg in 1g
increments, on sale for AU$50) and have seens some strange behaviour
with them. In general the scales seem quite accurate when compared with
commercially measured quantities, but when measuring dynamic loads they
behave rather strangely. Here's what I did...

I put a little bowl on the scales, zeroed them, and then started pouring
salt into the bowl until they read 10g. I thought the quantity looked a
bit much, so I took the bowl off the scales and put it back on, and the
scales read 14g. I poured the salt out of the bowl and put the bowl back
on the scales, and they read 0g. I dumped the salt back into the bowl
all in one go and the scales read 14g again! I tried the whole procedure
several times and got the same behaviour.

Is this a phenomenon common to all cheaper digital scales? It certainly
makes it difficult to measure dynamic loads - I find I'm always taking
the bowl off and putting it back on just to verify that they're reading
accurately.

james