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How much does a feather weigh?
asked by anonymous -
Answers
The average weight of a feather is - .00125 pounds according to my calculations.
See calculations below.
A little deceptive since if you drop a feather flat, it's weight is clearly seen but if you drop it "pin drop" style, it seems to have more weight. Paper can be the same. This is due to the resistance difference at the different angles and acceleration of gravity.
Calculations
How much does a bird weigh ? A bird weighs on average 20 - 30 pounds.
Lets say 5 pounds for the guts 5 pounds for the skeleton and 10 for the total weight of feathers.
How many feather does a bird have ? The bird with the least feathers is the Ruby Hummingbird with only 940 feathers in total
The bird with the most feathers is the Whistling Swan Cygnus which can have as many as 25,000 during winter.
http://www.earthlife.net/birds/feathers.html
Fact -A Bird's feathers can total twice the amount of it's skeleton.
( taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather )
Results - if an average bird has around 8,000 feathers
then each feather would weigh only .00125 pounds
Math - divide the amount of feathers by the total weight of feathers using the above figures.
Comments
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Impressive calculations and research for your feather =.00125 answer; but it is based on a couple problematic assumptions:
A bird's feathers "CAN" weigh more than it's skeleton. Specifically, the site mentions peacocks. Now, if we imagine a hummingbird feather vs a peacock feather, we will have vastly different weights. To complete the equation we need to know what is the 'average' weight of birds, and the 'average' number of feathers and we simply don't have that.
The answer is this question needs more parameters, or the answer will be fairly meaningless.
Comments
I would tend to agree more to this answer. I think that you could clear this up by asking a more specific question, such as, "how much do the primary feathers of a goose weigh." This is still open for discussion, but it is much more of an answerable question. Main points; to get an answerable question you need, the type of bird, and the type of feather.
You also need a really good set of scales. Most household scales will only go down as far as grams.