Gene Nygaard wrote:
My 'weight' is 230 pounds on earth. That's a fact.

My 'weight' would be 230 pounds on the earth's moon. That's also a
fact.

Your weight is defined as what you weigh on Earth, assuming a
gravitational acceleration of g. Obviously it's not true that your
weight would be measured as 230 pounds on the moon. The CRC Handbook of
Chemistry and Physics states that the weight of a body varies with
location, and defines weight as W = mg, where g is the local
acceleration due to gravity.

Reflecting the apparent dichotomy, the CRC defines the pound both ways:
"1. A unit of mass equal in the U.S. to 0.45359237 kg. exactly.
2. Specifically, a unit of measurement of the thrust or force of a
reaction engine representing the weight the engine can move, as an
engine with 100,000 pounds of thrust. 3. The force exerted on a one
pound mass by the standard acceleration of gravity."

Interestingly, they also define poundal, pound mass and pound weight.
No mention of pound force. Evidently, that would be redundant. ;-)

As an aside, what do you think: Will NASA ever learn the lesson of
the Mars Climate Orbiter, and quite using pounds?

Actually the contractor had specified the thrust of its rocket motor in
pounds. NASA failed to properly convert to the CGS system that it (and
most other scientific organizations) normally use.

73, Jim AC6XG

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:51:55 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:
You haven't got it yet?
I don't care. :-)

Gee, I forgot.
If anybody actually does come up with an official definition, you'll
be latching onto it like a fly onto ****.

Hi Gene,

Suffering from www.Alzheimer's? You dropped the cue in the space of
one line. :-)

You really need to read Tom's comment. Your return to barnyard
epithets again reinforces the fulfilled cliché of the bumpkin. Our
comparison of credentials does serve a useful purpose, n'est pas?

My sleeve runneth over.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Richard Clark wrote:
"Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S."

Anyone who can present a subject so simply and logically as Thompson
does in "Calcus Made Easy", Second Edition Enlarged, The Macmillan
Company, 1951, for the 21st printing, October 1914 for the 2nd edition
release, truly understands his subject.

Thompson also says:
"There are 60 minutes in the hour, 24 hours in the day, 7 days in the
week. There are therefore 1440 minutes in the day and 10080 in the
week."

This leaped off the page for me after the 12 pence to the shilling, 20
shillings to the pound, etc in an earlier posting.

Different names and unit sizes for the same item. It`s the same for
baloney. No matter how thin you slice it it`s still baloney. Kilograms
and pounds are also different names and unit sizes for the same items,
mass and force. Kilograms and pounds readily exchange when using the
proper rates.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

On 29 Sep 2003 16:50:17 GMT, (Tdonaly) wrote:
I expect Richard is enjoying himself, as he collects much laughter up the
sleeve, but I think the whole thing is strange, even for this newsgroup.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH

Hi Tom,

You are right. There come's a time when too much laughing is going
on, and not enough commentary. To quote a British comic, Frankie
Howerd of "Up Pompeii"
"It's a sin to mock the afflicted."

But to put this into perspective (I haven't lost my taste for humor),
there's still the eh antenna! I suppose I will go and sin some more.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 17:29:54 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:51:55 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:
You haven't got it yet?
I don't care. :-)

Gee, I forgot.
If anybody actually does come up with an official definition, you'll
be latching onto it like a fly onto ****.

Hi Gene,

Suffering from www.Alzheimer's? You dropped the cue in the space of
one line. :-)

You really need to read Tom's comment.

It's good to see that you have enough integrity left not to claim that
the old NBS conversion factor which Tom found (which differs from the
conditional definition given by Dr. Barry Taylor of NIST in 1995) is
the *official* definition of a pound as a unit of force.

Even if you were deceitfully hoping that some of the others in this
thread would misinterpret that last-quoted statement that way.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 19:39:53 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

Hi All,

Star Avoirdupois Pound
http://museum.nist.gov/object.asp?ObjID=10

Hassler constructed troy pounds and avoirdupois pounds, for
distribution to the custom-houses and to the States. The mass of a
troy pound is 0.82286 of an avoirdupois pound's mass. The troy pound
is used for determining the mass of precious metals. Hassler used the
troy pound of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, procured in London in
1827 by Albert Gallatin, to derive both types of standards. It is
likely that the Star Avoirdupois Pound (so named because of the star
inscribed on top of its knob) is the avoirdupois pound that was
directly derived from the Mint Pound by Hassler.

http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/ex1/Room2.html
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler was appointed the first Superintendent of
the Survey of the Coast by President Madison in 1816.
Born in Aarau, Switzerland in 1770, Hassler emigrated to the United
States in 1805.


Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

Gene Nygaard wrote:
"Look in the textbooks you used, and see if the authors have any
footnotes citing the authority for whatever definition they use.

My Random House American College Dictionary (circa 1950) says:
"kilogram, n. Metric System. a unit of mass and weight, equal to 1000
grams and equivalent to
2.2046 pounds avoirdupois.

For pounds, the same dictionary says:
"Pound. 1. a unit of weight and of mass, varying in different periods
and countries.

Pounds and kilograms are different units for the same things, force and
weight.

Rants in this thread are inane. The world gets by just fine using 2.2046
pounds equal 1 kilogram.

The question, "Which is heavier - a pound of gold or a pound of
feathers?"

A pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold because gold is
measured in troy pounds while feathers are measured in avoirdupois
pounds. Troy pounds have 12 ounces; avoirdupois pounds have 16 ounces. A
troy pound contains 372 grams in the Metric System: an avoirdupois pound
contins 454 grams. Each troy ounce is heavier than an avoirdupois ounce,
says "The Handy Science Answer Book".

Baloney is sliced thinly above, but it`s still baloney.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 23:38:14 -0500 (CDT),
(Richard Harrison) wrote:

Gene Nygaard wrote:
"Look in the textbooks you used, and see if the authors have any
footnotes citing the authority for whatever definition they use.

My Random House American College Dictionary (circa 1950) says:
"kilogram, n. Metric System. a unit of mass and weight, equal to 1000
grams and equivalent to
2.2046 pounds avoirdupois.

For pounds, the same dictionary says:
"Pound. 1. a unit of weight and of mass, varying in different periods
and countries.

Pounds and kilograms are different units for the same things, force and
weight.

Still haven't figured out that your claims that both kilograms and
pounds are names of both a unit of mass and a unit of force is at odds
with what Dave Shrader and Richard Clark have been telling us, have
you?

Of course, kilograms force were also still quite acceptable units in
1950 when your dictionary was written, before the International System
of Units was introduced in 1960.

Rants in this thread are inane. The world gets by just fine using 2.2046
pounds equal 1 kilogram.

In 1950, that's about as good as they could do--more precise
expressions of this equivalence would have required specifying the
location in which the avoirdupois pounds were used.

That changed in 1959, when the national standards laboratories of the
six major countries using English units got together and defined the
pound as 0.45359237 kg.

But people who care about what they are doing also know that this
conversion factor doesn't work for pounds force, which are converted
to newtons rather than to kilograms in the modern metric system.

The question, "Which is heavier - a pound of gold or a pound of
feathers?"

A pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold because gold is
measured in troy pounds while feathers are measured in avoirdupois
pounds. Troy pounds have 12 ounces; avoirdupois pounds have 16 ounces. A
troy pound contains 372 grams in the Metric System: an avoirdupois pound
contins 454 grams. Each troy ounce is heavier than an avoirdupois ounce,
says "The Handy Science Answer Book".

You missed the most important difference between troy pounds and
avoirdupois pounds. The troy units of weight are always units of
mass, never units of force. The avoirdupois units of weight were
units of mass from the beginning, but they recently spawned a unit of
force of the same name (a unit that was never well defined before the
20th century, when people first started using a "standard acceleration
of gravity").
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 10:12:33 -0700, Jim Kelley
wrote:



Gene Nygaard wrote:
My 'weight' is 230 pounds on earth. That's a fact.

My 'weight' would be 230 pounds on the earth's moon. That's also a
fact.

Your weight is defined as what you weigh on Earth, assuming a
gravitational acceleration of g. Obviously it's not true that your
weight would be measured as 230 pounds on the moon. The CRC Handbook of
Chemistry and Physics states that the weight of a body varies with
location, and defines weight as W = mg, where g is the local
acceleration due to gravity.

It doesn't cost you any more to pay attention.

Repeat to yourself until you understand it: Weight is an AMBIGUOUS
word. IT HAS SEVERAL DIFFERENT MEANINGS.

The one you cite from the Chemical Rubber Company is, of course, one
of those several definitions. If it always meant the same as mass in
physics jargon, I wouldn't have to point out to you that this is an
ambiguous word, would I?

Didn't you read the message you responded to, especially what
immediately followed the sentence you quoted? Didn't you see what
NIST and ASTM have to say about this? Look at it again, and read it
slowly this time

Let's review what I've already posted in other messages in this
thread, from ASTM

. . . thus, when one speaks of a person's weight,
the quantity referred to is mass. . .

and from NIST

Thus the SI unit of the quantity weight used in this
sense is the kilogram (kg) and the verb "to weigh" means
"to determine the mass of" or "to have a mass of".

Examples: the child's weight is 23 kg

Learn to evaluate your sources, also. Those sources are more credible
than any CRC Handbook on this subject.

Your definition of weight is not the proper one to use for your body
weight in the doctor's office or the gym. It is not the one used in
our hospitals. It is not the one used in weighing an NFL lineman at
380 lb, which is equal to 0.98 slinches in one system or 11.8 slugs in
another system of those strange units only used in calculations, only
in the sciences, and only in North America to any significant extent
(people in other English-units countries continued to use the absolute
fps system with force in poundals until they converted to the metric
system in their engineering).

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

But keep in mind that if you do make that voluntary decision, that
fact doesn't prove that anyone else is making an error if they call it
"weight."

Furthermore, it is not an acceptable option to misinterpret what they
are saying, and to misapply an inappropriate definition of weight.

You could, of course, argue that we should all change to your usage.
But you certainly aren't going to exert the effort that would be
necessary get us to give up a word to which we have a prior claim, if
you aren't smart enough to figure out that it would be a change.

Furthermore, to have any hope of success, you'd have to offer us a
verb as well as a noun.

Reflecting the apparent dichotomy, the CRC defines the pound both ways:
"1. A unit of mass equal in the U.S. to 0.45359237 kg. exactly.
2. Specifically, a unit of measurement of the thrust or force of a
reaction engine representing the weight the engine can move, as an
engine with 100,000 pounds of thrust. 3. The force exerted on a one
pound mass by the standard acceleration of gravity."

That really shouldn't come as any surprise to you, does it, at this
stage of the game?

Interestingly, they also define poundal, pound mass and pound weight.
No mention of pound force. Evidently, that would be redundant. ;-)

Have you figured out yet what those poundals are, and how they are
used? What is the base unit of mass in the system in which these
force units are used?

One thing about the CRC Handbook (which edition?) is that they include
stuff put in there over a period of many years, most of it undated.
Those "pounds weight" are an obsolete term for what are now called
pounds force.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

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



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