If you compare books a century ago with books today, you may find that today’s textbooks weigh more. It is even larger since it contains more illustrations, charts, and also diagrams.
The weight of a textbook varies from 2-6 pounds on average (with books increasing by weight, the higher the grade).
Which Book Weighs More?
If you wonder how much textbooks weigh, you will find out that science and physics books weigh more than other kinds of books. The average weight of physics books is 2.04 kg or 4.5 pounds.
Why is it so? Science books have more charts and illustrations than those of geography or history books. That’s why, more charts, more pages, and more weight. Now, you can imagine how much weight a student carries per day. Let me give you an example, and a high school student will bring around 4 books per day, weighing around 7.25 to 9.07 kg or 16 to 20 pounds.
And based on the study conducted in 2004 by the California Board of Education, that amount of weight is carried by students in the 11th grade. Of course, it results in some problems. Students experience back pain or neck pain. It is the reason why there are movements to change textbooks into digital books, since it’s simpler, less heavy, less paper, and of course more environmentally friendly.
Average Weight of Books
If you try to weigh books without using tools, we will use assumptions here. The larger the books, the more weight it is. For instance, a novel is around 6 to 9 inches, which has 300 pages. This equals 15.6 ounces on average. Thus, if you have 10,000 novels, it will weigh around 442 kilograms.
It is different if you want to measure hardcover books. This type of book weighs more than a paperback. If a book has 460 pages, it weighs around 1 pound and 2 ounces, and if you have 1,000 books, it will weigh 878.8 kg.
While textbooks are heavier because it has larger dimensions, if it has 500 pages with hardcover, the books weigh around 2 pounds, 10 ounces. And for 1,000 pages, this weighs 5 pounds, and 3.1 ounces, so for 1000 books, it will be 2,355.8 kg.
Facts about Books’ Weight
Though students today change their learning by using digital books, textbooks still play important roles as learning tools. The importance of books increases with age. Yet, some facts are buried in textbooks pages, giving us facts that we might not know.
For each student, the average number of books they need per semester is 20 books per student. Each textbook is weighing around two to six pounds. So per students will bring around 8 to 24 pounds of textbooks. If high school students take four classes per semester, let’s say they take English, Social Studies, Science, and Math, they will carry books up to 20 lbs in their backpack.
Some students choose to buy their books online than buying them at physical stores. The survey conducted by BookBoon pool in 2012, most high school students in America buy textbooks online second-hand. They spend up to $1,000 per year for textbooks only per year, and the price is increasing with inflation.
