Corrected entry: How could Indy possibly believe that a double handful of dirt scooped outside the cave could weigh as much as the gold idol (to avoid setting off traps related to lifting the idol)? He even takes some dirt out of the bag to try to match the weight. Indy must have experience with the weight of gold from other artifacts, and he already knows how sophisticated the traps at this site are. From the way Indy tosses it and the sound it makes when his assistant catches it, the idol is definitely solid stone or metal, even if it's only gold plated. If Indy didn't know what the internal material was, there was no way he could possibly judge the weight. In any case, dirt is less dense than any solid rock and wouldn't weigh the same. (00:07:55)
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Correction: Indy knew what the arifact was that he was looking for, how big it was, and what it made of. So he brought a pouch of dirt in with his best guess of it's weight. It obviously was a bad guess as it didn't weigh the same or the trap would not have been triggered.
The purported weight mismatch isn't the only issue - Indy takes the idol off before tossing the bag of dirt onto the base/sensor, so there is also a clear, if small, interval of time when there is no weight on the base/sensor at all. I always thought that was what actually triggered it.