Gene Nygaard wrote:
They are incorrect in the doctor's office, and even more incorrect in
the supermarket or the jewelry store. Like I said, you don't have to
call the quantities used there "weight"--but if you do call them
weight, use the definition which is correct in that context. Don't
misinterpret what is being used there.

Do you know what you're talking about Gene? Cuz I sure don't.

It's generally accepted that weight is a force.

I've shown in this thread from the experts in the field, including
NIST (the U.S. national standards agency) and ASTM (an industry
standards agency) and NPL (the U.K. national standards agency) and the
Canadian Standard for Metric Practice, that this is false.

I don't agree.

All of
these sources and many others tell you that weight is an ambiguous
word, with several different meanings.

What physical quantity do you think a grocery store scale measures?

Problems can arise when
someone claims a mass is a force and vice versa.

I agree.

And so a torque wrench has what kind of units printed on its scale -
mass and distance, or force and distance?

You could, of course, argue that we should all change to your usage.

Many people already have, obviously.

Not very many, surprisingly.

Just the ones who write physics books maybe?

It is much more common to find people
claiming, erroneously, that there is some error in that usage.

You're the first guy I've ever seen making claims about errors in usage.


Like slugs, poundals only exist in one limited purpose system
of mechanical units, mostly used to simplify calculations.

But you'd like us to believe the unit of mass in that system is
ubiquitous and universal, and that everybody is wrong!

73, Jim AC6XG