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 Tue, 30 Sep 2003 14:17:53 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:

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?


Okay people.... before this thread goes any further wrong than it
already has....

Kilograms (base unit of measurement, the gram) are units of MASS.
This is a measure of the amount matter in an object...

Pounds are a unit of force, a measurement of the gravitational
attraction a body has relative to another, reference, body.

A 2 kilogram object will have the same mass on the earth as it does on
the moon.

A 60 pound object on the earth will have a weight of 10 pounds on the
moon.

If you kiddies are going to argue physics, you really SHOULD get your
terms straight.

God, pseudo-intellectuals really do begin to wear thin quite
quickly...


Raymond Sirois KU2S
SysOp: The Lost Chord BBS
607-733-5745
telnet://thelostchord.dns2go.com:6000

Raymond Sirois wrote:
"A 60-pound object on earth will have a weight of 10 pounds on the
moon."

That`s about right. Gravitational force on the moon is about 0.16 times
that on earth.

If a mass of 60 pounds is suspended from a weight scale on earth, the
force on the scale registers 60 pounds. As Cecil noted, gravitational
force is a vector. Its direction is toward the center of the mass that
exerts the attraction.

A spring scale free to align itself will measure 60 pounds tension no
matter where the 60-pound pul on it comes from. On the moon the object
with a 60-pound attraction to the earth only exerts a 9.6-pound pull on
the spring scale. The object did not change. The spring scale did not
change. The mass of the moon is much smaller than that of the earth, so
its attraction is proportionally less.

A weight balance scale would behave differently from the spring balance
scale. The balance weights and positions would be almost unaffected by
the change in gravitaional force because the forces on both scale and
balance weights change in the same proportion.

A weight balance scale would usually employ a balancing weight much
smaller than 60 pounds to balance a weight of 60 pounds. The balance is
struck with a smaller weight through leverage..It`s a teeter-totter
with the measured quantity getting the short end of the stick. Balance
remains at the same spot regardless of the gravitational pull on both
ends of the balance beam. It`s the torques which balance. When we change
the gravitational force, we multiply both sides of the balance equation
by the same factor.

The spring balance is calibrated for the force of gravity on a mass
residing near the earth`s surface.

The weight balance is calibrated for the same gravitational attraction
on earth.

On the moon the spring scale indicates about 10 pounds for an earth
weight of 60 pounds. On the moon, the weight balance scale still
indicates 60 pounds, though the gravitational pull is only about 10
pounds.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 03:42:41 GMT, KU2S wrote:

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 14:17:53 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:

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?


Okay people.... before this thread goes any further wrong than it
already has....

Kilograms (base unit of measurement, the gram) are units of MASS.
This is a measure of the amount matter in an object...

Pounds are a unit of force, a measurement of the gravitational
attraction a body has relative to another, reference, body.

A 2 kilogram object will have the same mass on the earth as it does on
the moon.

A 60 pound object on the earth will have a weight of 10 pounds on the
moon.

If you kiddies are going to argue physics, you really SHOULD get your
terms straight.

God, pseudo-intellectuals really do begin to wear thin quite
quickly...


Raymond Sirois KU2S

So what about those "meter kilograms" on my torque wrench?

What's a poundal?

Did NIST get it wrong, in what I pointed out in response to Richard
Clark's challenge?
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/appenB8.html#P

To convert from to Multiply by

pound (avoirdupois) (lb) 23 kilogram (kg) 4.535 924 E-01
pound (troy or apothecary) (lb) kilogram (kg) 3.732 417 E-01

[The 23 is a reference to a footnote in the printed and pdf versions,
a note on a separate page in html]
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/footnotes.html#f23

23 The exact conversion factor is 4.535 923 7 E-01. All units
in Sec. B.8 and Sec. B.9 that contain the pound refer to
the avoirdupois pound.

How is the pound officially defined in Canada (Weights and Measures
Act of 1953), in the United Kingdom (Weights and Measures Act of
1963), in South Africa, in New Zealand, in Australia, in Ireland and
in other places as well as the United States, whose definition you can
read at
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/Fed...doc59-5442.pdf
http://gssp.wva.net/html.common/refine.pdf

But since you are so convinced that this is a "physics" problem, let's
just review the last of the examples I quoted earlier from the
textbook authors recommended by Dave Shrader.
Francis Weston Sears and Mark W. Zemansky, University Physics,
Addison-Wesley, 4th ed., 1970.

[page 232]

The quantity of heat per unit mass that must be
supplied to a material at its melting point to convert
it completely to a liquid at the same temperature is
called the heat of fusion of the material. The quantity
of heat per unit mass that must be supplied to a
material at its boiling point to convert it completely
to a gas a the same temperature is called the heat
of vaporization of the material. Heats of fusion and
vaporization are expressed in calories per gram, or
Btu per pound. Thus the heat of fusion of ice is
about 80 cal g^-1 or 144 Btu lb^-1. The heat of
vaporization of water (at 100°C) is 539 cal g^-1 or
970 Btu lb^-1. Some heats of fusion and
vaporization are listed in Table 16-2.

Now, it doesn't take a whole lot of genius to figure out what the
quantities are which are measured in those units with the -1
exponents, does it?

But you don't even have to guess. Sears and Zemansky come right out
and tell you. For you and some of the other slow-witted folks in this
thread, here's a hint: Look for the seventh word in each of the first
two sentences, that little word sandwiched in between the words "unit"
and "that." Did you find it?

******************

That's as far as I went last time around. But this time we are
dealing with real deep-rooted stoooopid, so I can't leave anything to
the intelligence of the intended reader.

That seventh word which I'm pointing out to you is spelled m-a-s-s.
Do you see it now, Raymond? That's "mass," right?

Now, let's compare the parallels in the construction here. In terms
of the quantities being measured, this is expressed as

quantity of heat per unit of mass

and in terms of the units used to measure these quantities, it is
expressed this way

Btu lb^-1

Now, let's match them up:

o The "quantity of heat" is measured in the units "Btu"

o The "per" corresponds to the superscript -1 (that Btu lb^-1 could
also be written as Btu/lb where the slash would correspond to "per")

o The quantity "mass" is measured in the units "lb"; now that is
the abbreviation, from one of its Latin names, for the units which
Sears and Zemansky call pounds.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
Gentlemen of the jury, Chicolini here may look like an idiot,
and sound like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: He
really is an idiot.
Groucho Marx