On 30 Sep 2003 18:36:50 GMT, (Tdonaly) wrote:

Cecil wrote,

Gene Nygaard wrote:
You can, of course, choose not to call this quantity "weight." You
can call it mass instead, if you want to.

Here's an interesting quote from _University_Physics_ by Young and
Freedman: "On the moon, a stone would be just as hard to throw
horizontally, but it would be easier to lift." It also says weight
is a vector and mass is a scalar.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp


You better watch out, Cecil, Gene is liable to write a scathing indictment
of your intelligence, integrity, and job fitness, for quoting that. By the way,

I don't know why I would. I agree with the quoted part. Of course,
though the stone is just as hard to throw, it will likely go farther
before it falls to the ground.

Would you say that a boat is heavy because it is hard to push away
from the dock? What is the relevant factor here--that it is pressing
down with a force due to gravity of 9000 pounds force? Or that it has
a mass of 9000 pounds?

What is the metric equivalent of a ton used for the weight of a U.S.
Navy ship? For example, the tanker USNS Henry J. Kaiser is 27,561
tons deadweight. How much is that is SI units?
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/