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Is a Coulomb dimensionless?

G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
Since you insist---------

---
Amazing how you just keep raising the bar! Just like that, the old nyg
is 20dB down from where it was yesterday!

Once again, the litany, since maybe if you hear it enough it'll break
through the thick skull of yours:

What is it that makes you so damn much smarter than the experts in the
field, from all around the world?

How exactly do your credentials stack up against those of Dr. Barry N.
Taylor?
1. Scales don't measure mass, they measure weight.

You are a nut case who still thinks that all scales-- including those
which tell you they give "HONEST WEIGHT, NO SPRINGS"-- are "spring
scales" and that the adjective there is some meaningless superfluity.
Didn't you understand my point about the "Scales of Justice"?

Then you top it off by being unable to comprehend the possibility that
words like "mass" and "weight" can have several different meanings.

Worst of all, there is no way you can interpret that statement to make
it true.
2. Weight is not mass, weight is the force mass exerts due to the
acceleration of gravity.

Weight is an ambiguous word, one with several different meanings.
That is indeed one of its meanings--but that is never its meaning when
anybody talks about "atomic weight" or "molecular weight," nor when
anybody talks about "net weight" (this is not a term used in physics;
you haven't been able to make your containers invisible to gravity,
have you, so if you are interested in force the force exerted by the
container is indistinguishable from the force exerted by its
contents), nor when anybody talks about "carat weight" or "troy
weight" or "dry weight."
And, even though I shouldn't, I'll cast you a few pearls:

1. A one kilogram mass doesn't weigh one kilogram, it weighs 9.8
newtons.

Oh? Where, Chicolini? On Mars? You didn't specify any place. Is
that some universal truth?

It is, of course, true that 1 N = 9.80665 kgf, anywhere whatsoever.
But those are kilograms force, obsolete units which are not a part of
the modern metric system, something entirely different from the
kilograms which are a part of SI.

A kilogram weighs one kilogram, in the definition of weight quite
properly and legitimately used in commerce, and in medicine for human
body weight, and in zoology for the weight of other animals as well.

In a different definition of weight, a kilogram on the surface of the
Earth will have a weight that varies, even if you restrict yourself to
sea level, between 9.7803 N and 9.8322 N. If you throw in places like
Mt. Chimborazo, the highest mountain on Earth in both ways relevant to
this discussion, the variation is even greater.

But on Mars, in that definition of weight meaning the force due to
gravity, the weight of a kilogram is only 3.7 N.

The units used are often one of your best clues as to which meaning of
the word weight is intended. American Society for Testing and
Materials, Standard for Metric Practice, E 380-79, ASTM 1979:

3.4.1.2. . . . Because of the dual use of the term
weight as a quantity, this term should be avoided in
technical practice except under circumstances in which
its meaning is completely clear. When the term is used,
it is important to know whether mass or force is intended
and to use SI units properly as described in 3.4.1.1,
by using kilograms for mass or newtons for force.
2. A weight of one newton is equal to a weight of approximately 3.6
avoirdupois ounces.

On earth, 3.61 avoirdupois ounces at sea level at the equator, or 3.59
avoirdupois ounces at the poles. Or about 9.5 avoirdupois ounces on
Mars.

But on Mars, 1.00000 N = 3.59694 ozf, just as it does on Earth.
3. A weight of one newton is equal to a weight of approximately 3.28
Troy ounces.

Yes. But unlike their avoirdupois cousins, and unlike grams and
kilograms, troy ounces have never spawned a unit of force with the
same name.

So it will be about 8.7 troy ounces on Mars, and there is no troy
ounce unit which will give you the same number on Mars as on Earth.
And, a treat I'm sure you'll enjoy from Mrs. Govoni Vogel's little book:


QUOTE

OUNCE TROY
==========

How to denote "ounce troy" as other "U.S. weights":

"One ounce troy" is equal to:

480 grains 20dwt 24 scruples

8 drams 17.554 29 dr avdp 0.068 571 43 lbs avdp

1.097 143 oz avdp 0.083 333 333 lbs troy

12 oz troy = 1 lbs tr or is equal to: 240 dwt


END QUOTE

Your deliberate omission is the only troubling part about this--from
the title, it's obvious that she also tells you how to convert these
troy units to *metric* units. Why don't you tell us about that?

Well, you've established one thing--the credentials of Christine N.
Govoni Vogel are no longer a concern. She says nothing contrary to
what I've been saying, and nothing contrary to what NIST says in SP811
or anywhere else (at least not anything relevant to what we've been
discussing, the only problems which point to the unprofessional nature
of the author of this book, or its transcriber here, are that silly
"s" in the plural in the symbol for one of her units, and the failure
to specifically identify the obsolete apothecaries dram to distinguish
it from the avoirdupois dram and the various fluid drams).

The only remaining issue is your inability to comprehend what you
read. At the very least, you ought to be able to figure out that even
if you were to choose to limit yourself to one particular definition
of the word "weight" (something you don't actually do, because you are
too stupid to figure out what it actually means when you talk about
things like net weight or carat weight or atomic weight in the same
way everyone else talks about them), that doesn't mean that this is
what the word means when someone else uses it.

Those are all units of mass. A troy ounce is a unit of mass. Since a
pennyweight is 1/20 of a troy ounce, it is a unit of mass. A grain of
1/24 of a pennyweight is a unit of mass. A pound of 12 troy ounces is
a unit of mass.

She's just using the word "weights" in one of its quite legitimate and
proper meanings which will be found in any decent dictionary, one that
was pointed out by the U.S. national standards laboratory (NIST), by
the U.K. national standards laboratory (NPL), the Canadian Standard
for Metric Practice, etc., etc. That's the original meaning of the
word "weight," which entered Old English over 1000 years ago meaning
the quantity measured with a balance.

An avoirdupois pound is also a unit of mass. Independent standards for
the avoirdupois pound were abandoned back in the time of Henry VIII,
and the avoirdupois units were redefined as an exact fraction of the
troy standards of mass. The avoirdupois pound was then redefined as
exactly 7000 grains troy; it had been something like 7002 grains troy
when the independent standards were used. Since you obviously haven't
looked up the current official definition of the avoirdupois pound
(the troy units are now officially defined in terms of the avoirdupois
units which are in turn defined in terms of the kilogram), here is how
it is defined in the current U.S. law. It is officially defined the
same way by all the other parties to the 1959 international agreement
(Canada, the U.K., South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand) and it is
also officially defined the same way by some countries not a party to
that agreement, such as Ireland.

Announcement. Effective July 1, 1959, all calibrations
in the U.S. customary system of weights and measures carried
out by the National Bureau of Standards will continue to be
based upon metric measurement standards and except for the
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as noted below, will be made
in terms of the following exact equivalences and
appropriate multiples and submultiples:
1 yard = 0.9144 meter
pound (avoirdupois) = 0.453 592 37 kilogram

Federal Register of July 1, 1959, F.R. Doc. 59-5442; Filed, June 30,
1959; 8:45 a.m.,
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdoc59-5442.pdf


Gene Nygaard
Time flies like an arrow;
fruit flies like a banana.
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 02:37:00 -0600, Gene Nygaard <[email protected]>

did his usual song and dance about 'credentials' this and 'the law' that
and a little song and dance about an ambiguity which doesn't exist
except in the minds of the confused, and wound up his act with:

Announcement. Effective July 1, 1959, all calibrations
in the U.S. customary system of weights and measures carried
out by the National Bureau of Standards will continue to be
based upon metric measurement standards and except for the
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as noted below, will be made
in terms of the following exact equivalences and
appropriate multiples and submultiples:
1 yard = 0.9144 meter
pound (avoirdupois) = 0.453 592 37 kilogram

Federal Register of July 1, 1959, F.R. Doc. 59-5442; Filed, June 30,
1959; 8:45 a.m.,

Which indicates that governments which decree that the value of pi
should be set equal to three have no business making proclamations about
the congruence of weight and mass.
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 02:37:00 -0600, Gene Nygaard <[email protected]>

did his usual song and dance about 'credentials' this and 'the law' that
and a little song and dance about an ambiguity which doesn't exist
except in the minds of the confused, and wound up his act with:



Which indicates that governments which decree that the value of pi
should be set equal to three have no business making proclamations about
the congruence of weight and mass.

About what we'd expect from a clueless talking hat, one who has given
us numerous demonstrations that he is so fucking dumb he cannot even
figure out that the word "dumb" can have more than one different
meaning, just as many other words do.

In case you've missed it the dozen or so times I've pointed it out to
you, the "government" which came up with this common international
definition of the pound was the professional scientists of the
national standards laboratories of the following countries:

The United States of America
Canada
The United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The Republic of South Africa
Australia
New Zealand

In the United States, all that was required was the quoted official
notice of regulatory action in the Federal Register, since Congress
had had the sense a few decades earlier to delegate this authority to
the pros.

But in some other countries, this decision of the scientists also
received the endorsement of the legislators in the passing of a
statute. This happened with the Parliaments of both Canada and the
U.K. for example:

U.K.: Weights and Measures Act of 1963

Canada: Weights and Measures Act of 1953 (now, would you like to
take any bets as to whether or not those legislators received any
assistance from their native home-grown scientists in adopting this
definition six years before the rest of the world did?)

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

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
About what we'd expect from a clueless talking hat, one who has given
us numerous demonstrations that he is so fucking dumb he cannot even
figure out that the word "dumb" can have more than one different
meaning, just as many other words do.

---
Geez, Gene,

You ask me for references, I give you references which you lambaste
until you finally come to realize that they're valid, then you
grudgingly accept them.

You ask me to relate one quantity to another for you, I relate one
quantity to another for you and all you do is complain.

You use the language incorrectly and I graciously correct you in order
that your communications might eventually become less ambiguous and what
do I get? Abuse. Why? because you revel in the ambiguity so that you
can blather on, ad nauseam, for volumes when a mere sentence would be
sufficient to convey the paucity of meaning associated with your
diatribes.
---
In case you've missed it the dozen or so times I've pointed it out to
you, the "government" which came up with this common international
definition of the pound was the professional scientists of the
national standards laboratories of the following countries:

The United States of America
Canada
The United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The Republic of South Africa
Australia
New Zealand

In the United States, all that was required was the quoted official
notice of regulatory action in the Federal Register, since Congress
had had the sense a few decades earlier to delegate this authority to
the pros.

But in some other countries, this decision of the scientists also
received the endorsement of the legislators in the passing of a
statute. This happened with the Parliaments of both Canada and the
U.K. for example:

U.K.: Weights and Measures Act of 1963

Canada: Weights and Measures Act of 1953 (now, would you like to
take any bets as to whether or not those legislators received any
assistance from their native home-grown scientists in adopting this
definition six years before the rest of the world did?)


---
That's sausages, not physics.

What you don't seem to want to come to grips with, because you'd have to
admit that you made a mistake, is that in the scientific world the
kilogram is not a unit of weight and a pound is not a unit of mass.
It's really so simple to verify (just look in _any_ physics text) that
your seeming reluctance to take that step and report your findings makes
me think that you actually _want_ to feign ignorance for the purpose of
continuing your grandstanding.

Governments and their committees be damned, a kilogram remains a unit of
mass and a pound remains a unit of weight regardless of legislation.

You can play semantic games if you want to, and try to excuse your
pigheadedness by bleating "ambiguity" in an effort to cover up your
dishonesty, but facts remain facts, and those facts are that the
kilogram is a unit of mass and the pound is a unit of weight regardless
of how much you'd like for them not to be.

End of story.
 
J

John Woodgate

Jan 1, 1970
0
I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields <jfields@austininstrum
ents.com> wrote (in said:
Geez, Gene,

You ask me for references, I give you references which you lambaste
until you finally come to realize that they're valid, then you
grudgingly accept them.

You ask me to relate one quantity to another for you, I relate one
quantity to another for you and all you do is complain.

You use the language incorrectly and I graciously correct you in order
that your communications might eventually become less ambiguous and what
do I get? Abuse. Why? because you revel in the ambiguity so that you
can blather on, ad nauseam, for volumes when a mere sentence would be
sufficient to convey the paucity of meaning associated with your
diatribes.

I have 200 unexpired articles in this thread, and I've tried to debate
with Mr Nygaard before. I don't think he'll EVER give up, and the thread
has gone a long way from the original 'What is the SI unit of weight?',
although it hasn't deviated anywhere near as much as some threads do.
The last time the Newton was mentioned was about 6 months ago, or does
it just seem like that?

I suggest, John, that you save the wear and tear on your typing fingers,
and move on to more constructive madness.
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have 200 unexpired articles in this thread, and I've tried to debate
with Mr Nygaard before. I don't think he'll EVER give up, and the thread
has gone a long way from the original 'What is the SI unit of weight?',
although it hasn't deviated anywhere near as much as some threads do.
The last time the Newton was mentioned was about 6 months ago, or does
it just seem like that?
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields <jfields@austininstrum


I have 200 unexpired articles in this thread, and I've tried to debate
with Mr Nygaard before. I don't think he'll EVER give up, and the thread
has gone a long way from the original 'What is the SI unit of weight?',
although it hasn't deviated anywhere near as much as some threads do.

This subthread hasn't deviated one bit from its origins as you stated
it--its just that there are still a couple of idiots who do not
understand that the SI unit of weight is often the kilogram, but
sometimes the newton--and it depends entirely on which definition of
the ambigous word "weight" is being used.

If you want to avoid being painted with the same brush, you wouldn't
be so quick to jump in to the defense of an idiot like John
Fields--especially without doing even a minimal amount of checking
into what has transpired in this thread since you last participated.
The last time the Newton was mentioned was about 6 months ago, or does
it just seem like that?

Do you mean the "newton" or some person named Newton? Or are you just
a scofflaw like the beerman--what's his name, Kevin Aylward?--bound
and determined not to follow the rules at any cost?

Let's talk about that Isaac Newton first. When he measured length, he
liked to use the Paris units: toises, pieds, pounces, lignes, etc.

But when he weighed things, he normally used the troy units of mass.
Probably has something to do with borrowing his employer's tools at
work. After all, he was one of those government bureaucrats you and
John Fields keep railing at, serving as Master of the Mint. The
British Mint, naturally, used troy units of mass at that time--now
they use grams (not newtons, of course--they aren't as dumb as you and
John Fields are).

When Newton weighed things, of course, he used mass-measuring
balances--just like everyone else in his time did. Spring scales
didn't even exist for another century or so.

Now, as far as the units called newtons go, they were mentioned at
least eight times, by me and by John Fields and by documents I quoted,
in my last message above the one to which you responded to John Fields
reply to me. Just as is the case for John Fields, it doesn't cost you
any more to pay attention, John Woodgate.

BTW, just because you and John Fields are such God-awful slow
learners, and you never paid any attention whatsoever in your history
classes, I'd better point out that Sir Isaac Newton never used the
unit of measure called a newton. In fact, that unit didn't even exist
until the 20th century, and it wasn't officially accepted by the CGPM
as the name for the mks unit of force until 1948. Oh, for you
history-impaired folk, I'd better also point out that this means
didn't exist until 175 years or so after Isaac Newton died, and it was
over 260 years after the publishing of the Principia before the CGPM
officially adopted the newton as the name for this unit of measure.

The meaning of the ambiguous word "weight" which is now common in the
mechanics sections of introductory physics textbooks was a new
definition popularlized by an otherwise obscure translator named
Andrew Motte, when he translated Newton's major work into English a
couple of years after Newton's death.

By that time we'd already been using the word "weight" in the way we
still use it in commerce for more than 750 years. IOW, we have the
prior claim to this word. Our continued use of that original meaning
is quite proper and legitimate.


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

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
---
Geez, Gene,

You ask me for references, I give you references which you lambaste
until you finally come to realize that they're valid, then you
grudgingly accept them.

How damn dumb are you?

Your only reference (singular) is okay except for one major
problem--it provides no support whatsoever for the claims you have
been making, plus a couple of minor problems unrelated to our
discussion showing sloppiness on the part of the author.
You ask me to relate one quantity to another for you, I relate one
quantity to another for you and all you do is complain.

I asked you to show that troy ounces are units of force. I don't
think I even asked you to back up your more ludicrous claim that troy
ounces are not units of mass, but I won't argue about it if you say I
did.

Instead, you merely showed that troy ounces can be converted to other
troy multiples and submultiples, and to avoirdupois pounds, another
unit of mass.

How damn dumb are you?
You use the language incorrectly and I graciously correct you in order
that your communications might eventually become less ambiguous and what
do I get? Abuse.

One question answered. So fucking dumb that you still, even after I
specifically pointed out my disagreement with your earlier
pontifications on semantics, won't admit that "dumb" can have more
than one meaning, just as "weight" can have more than one meaning.

What are your credentials in the science of linguistics, especially in
the branch called semantics?
Why? because you revel in the ambiguity so that you
can blather on, ad nauseam, for volumes when a mere sentence would be
sufficient to convey the paucity of meaning associated with your
diatribes.

Why should it be physics in the first place?--it wasn't physics when I
got into this thread.

Furthermore, you haven't even specifically admitted that the weight of
sausages is the same thing as "mass" in physics jargon. Do you want
to make that clear now?
What you don't seem to want to come to grips with, because you'd have to
admit that you made a mistake, is that in the scientific world the
kilogram is not a unit of weight and a pound is not a unit of mass.

Oh? So now you are claiming that we have separate standards for
physics from those we have for "sausages," are you? That this
worldwide official definition of a pound for some strange reason does
not apply to physics? Why wasn't this significant exception mentioned
in any of the official definitions, anywhere in the world?

How goddamn stupid can you be?

Suppose you tell me how a physicist is going to know whether or not
she has a "pound."

Tell me:

1. What exactly is the nature of the standard for this pound? Is it
something mechanical, something electrical, or what?

2. Who made this the standard for physics?

3. What is the standard for chemistry? Same as for sausages, or
what? For zoology? For agronomy? For electronics?

4. When exactly was it made the standard? Just the year will do--but
keep in mind that your inability to provide that minimal amount of
information will also be quite illuminative.

5. How exactly was this setting of the standard announced? How is
anybody going to know that it is the standard? Obviously not by
legislation, from the way you've been talking--so is it some
officially published standard by somebody having the authority to set
this standard? Cite the specific publication.

6. How did the defining agency acquire this authority to set the
standard?

7. Where is this standard kept, and who maintains it?

8. To whom does this standard apply? In other words, tell us not
only for whom the defining agency has the authority to make this
definition, but also tell us exactly for what purposes that defining
agency claims that its standard should be used, now that you have
admitted that the standard for sausages is the one I have pointed out
to you. In other words, answer this question not only geographically
(does it apply only in certain countries, for example?) but by field
of activity (does it apply in physics but not in chemistry, or what?)
and by membership is some group (AIP members, maybe? Eastern Orthodox
Christians or Tibetan monks? American Bowling Congress?).
It's really so simple to verify (just look in _any_ physics text) that

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

Let's review what I've already pointed out to you TWICE at least, from
something which clearly falls in your "_any_ physics text," category,
an introductory textbook for physics at the university level. Not
only that but Active8 (who at times shows signs of being every bit as
slow a learner as some of the others in this newsgroup) was able to
make the same point without reference to any textbook.

WAKE UP, JOHN WOODGATE!!!!!! YOU need to PAY ATTENTION this time
also, now that you've officially endorsed the ludicrous posturing of
JOhn Fields.

I really thought I'd gone through it step-by-step last time so that
even the dumbest people following this thread could find their way.
I'll look for any possible way to add additional steps this time.

Francis Weston Sears and Mark W. Zemansky, University Physics,
Addison-Wesley, 4th ed., 1970, is the textbook. I said (with a couple
of additions for slow learners, as mentioned above, but with no change
in the quoted material from this physics textbook):

Furthermore, here's a little exercise for John Fields and some of the
other slower people [JOHN WOODGATE, that now includes you] following
this thread, to show that it certainly isn't just limited to commerce.
I also call your attention to the fact that the units and measurements
used below are used in technical fields by engineers and scientists;
they don't come from the usage of the local butcher or baker.

[page 228 (formula changed to one line)]:

If the system undergoes a temperature change dt,
the specific heat capacity c of the system is defined
as the ratio of the heat dQ to the product of the mass
m and temperature change dt; thus

c = dQ/(m dt)

The specific heat capacity of water can be taken
to be 1 cal g-1 (C°)-1 or 1 Btu lb-1 (F°)-1 for most
practical purposes.

Tell me, what exactly does "lb" mean in this quote?

Hints:

1. Look at what they tell you the denominator is in words. That would
be the first quantity identified as part of the "product." [new
addition: it is spelled m-a-s-s]


2. Look at the unit in the same position as "lb" in the calories
formula. [new addition: that is "g" standing for "gram," a unit
which even John Fields admits to being a unit of mass]

[page 230]

Mechanical engineers frequently use the British
thermal unit (Btu), defined as the quantity of heat
required to raise the temperature of 1 lb (mass) of
water from 63°F to 64°F. The following relations hold:

1 Btu = 778.3 ft lb = 252.0 cal = 1055 J.

How much water is that, all you bright "enginees" as one of you
referred to yourselves? Surely not the amount that exerts a certain
amount of force due to the local acceleration of gravity, is it?

[New addition: no, it is not the amount of force due to the local
acceleration of gravity.]

Now, do a little dimensional analysis as well. Are the "lb" used in
expressing that quantity of water the same units as the "lb" in the
"ft lb" of energy?

[once again, no--notwithstanding the fact that the idiots writing his
book use the same symbol for it]

[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 "lb" and "g" units with
the -1 exponents, does it? [addition for really slooowww learners: I
am referring, of course, to the "lb" in "Btu lb^-1" and the "g" in
"cal g^-1"]

[The answer is _mass_, of course.] But you don't even have to guess.
Sears and Zemansky come right out and tell you. For John Fields and
John Woodgate et al., 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? What is that four letter word? _ _ _ _

[This is getting tedious: m-a-s-s]

P.S. Note that Sears and Zemansky are idiots like Mike (Active8) and
John Fields (don't remember for sure about John Woodgate, but since he
has been painted with the same brush, I'll assume he fits the category
as well), failing to distinguish between two different units of
measure. They use "pound" and the symbol "lb" for the unit of mass
here, and they use "pound" and the symbol "lb" not only for the
mechanics section of the book, but also in this chapter when they use
"ft lb" as units of energy.

your seeming reluctance to take that step and report your findings makes
me think that you actually _want_ to feign ignorance for the purpose of
continuing your grandstanding.

It was done, and the findings were reported. It doesn't cost you any
more to pay attention.
Governments and their committees be damned, a kilogram remains a unit of
mass and a pound remains a unit of weight regardless of legislation.

Did you clue us in above, then, as to who exactly it is who can tell
us what a pound is in physics?

Suppose you do the same for a kilogram and tell me exactly what that
is in physics, answering the same questions as asked about the pound.
No "government" agencies like the BIPM and CGPM, organizations
established by treaty among the governments of many nations, and made
up of government representatives from those nations, accepted. Show
me the official _physics_ standard for a kilogram, since you claim
that this is determined independently from government pronouncements.
You can play semantic games if you want to, and try to excuse your
pigheadedness by bleating "ambiguity" in an effort to cover up your
dishonesty, but facts remain facts, and those facts are that the
kilogram is a unit of mass and the pound is a unit of weight regardless
of how much you'd like for them not to be.

End of story.

Oh, admitting now that this is just a "story," a figment of your
deranged imagination?

I suppose that you also think that those heathen tribesmen on the
British Isles over 1000 years ago, when they first started using the
word "weight" in the way we still use it in commerce today, made an
ERROR in inventing this word. How in the world do you suppose they
could be so stupid as to be unable to discern the God-given word they
were supposed to invent for this purpose, i.e. the synonym for it
which is used in physics jargon today, "mass"? Damn those
missionaries, not having enough sense to get there in time to convert
them before they did something so stupid!


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
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
I suppose that you also think that those heathen tribesmen on the
British Isles over 1000 years ago, when they first started using the
word "weight" in the way we still use it in commerce today, made an
ERROR in inventing this word. How in the world do you suppose they
could be so stupid as to be unable to discern the God-given word they
were supposed to invent for this purpose, i.e. the synonym for it
which is used in physics jargon today, "mass"? Damn those
missionaries, not having enough sense to get there in time to convert
them before they did something so stupid!


---
FYI, a thousand years ago no one knew a thing about mass or gravity or
(heaven forbid!) acceleration. All they knew was that some things were
heavier than others. Then, along came Newton who basically figured the
whole thing out and turned the world right-side up somewhere between 317
and 335 years ago.

Long before him though, the Romans had the "Uncia" and the "Libra"
(which was equal to 12 unciae) as measures of _weight_, of course, since
they had no clue about mass. They used the balance (which they also
called the libra) to measure unknown weights by comparison with accepted
standards, of course, and since they knew nothing of gravity there the
matter rested for a long time.

You may notice that "uncia" is very similar to "ounce" and "lb" seems to
be a contraction from "libra", so it seems likely that somebody borrowed
from somebody else; but no matter, the point is that these were, and
still are, units of weight, not mass. Even more interesting, I think,
is that there is less than a 10% difference between the troy ounce and
the avoirdupois ounce, which leads me to believe that once upon a time
they were the same thing and that the variation in their weight is due
to their being "stepped on" continually for hundreds of years.

As fascinating as that all may be, what you seem not to be aware of is
that the matter of the difference between mass and weight was settled by
a resolution of the 3rd CGPM in 1901.

A _resolution_ , boyo, so that should satisfy your hunger for edicts and
proclamations clearing up all those inconvenient little snags.

Here's a link for your edification:

http://www1.bipm.org/jsp/en/ViewCGPMResolution.jsp?CGPM=3&RES=1
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
They knew a millennium ago that a heavy boat was harder to push away
from the dock, and that a heavy rock was harder to lift than a ball of
wool of the same dimensions. But those are two quite different
things--do you understand that, even today? I doubt it very much.
Yet those people a thousand years ago didn't have the shoulders to
stand on that you have today--you have no excuse for not knowing this
simple fact. The difficulty in pushing that boat away from the dock
has little or nothing to do with how hard gravity is pulling the boat
towards the center of the Earth.

But the only reason they weighed things was to see how much stuff they
had, for purposes of commerce. Mass. You didn't have engineers
running around figuring out wind loads on a building or things like
that. Construction methods were learned by trial and error--if the
building fell down, you might make it a little stronger next time, but
not in any way that was measured.

Then, along came Newton who basically figured the
whole thing out and turned the world right-side up somewhere between 317
and 335 years ago.


You might have a point if, because of this new-found knowledge, we
suddenly changed the way we'd been doing things, or the words we used
to describe them. But we did not do so.

So, when we got to be so smart 317 yr to 335 yr ago, what exactly did
we change about what we measure when we weigh a bar of gold or
platinum, a bundle of carrots, or a sack of sugar? Absolutely
nothing.

Perhaps now is the time for you to wax philosophical, and explain
exactly why you think that, after we got to be so goldarned smart, we
would _want_ to start measuring force due to gravity when we buy and
sell a bar of platinum by weight.

We still weighed things with balances--it was a century and a half
before spring scales appeared, and various hydraulic or pneumatic or
piezoelectric load cell devices are newer than that.

Nobody used the word "weight" with the meaning you insist is the only
one in that 317-335 years ago time period--that meaning doesn't come
into use until the 1720s, and it was mostly popularized by Motte when
he translated Newton into English a couple of years after Newton's
death in 1727--Motte's work appeared about 275 years ago. But the
addition of a new meaning for this word does not necessitate the
abandonment of the old meaning.
Long before him though, the Romans had the "Uncia" and the "Libra"
(which was equal to 12 unciae) as measures of _weight_, of course, since
they had no clue about mass.

What they had no clue about was gravity. The "weight" they knew was
the same thing physicists call "mass" in their jargon today.

"Weight" wasn't the contemporary term for this quantity. We call them
measures of "weight" now, when we know the difference between mass and
the force due to gravity. But we also know now that it is "mass"
which they measured, not the force due to gravity. Ought to tell you
something about at least one current meaning of the word weight,
right? We also know that it is mass which they wanted to measure, not
the force due to gravity--we know because we still measure the very
same thing for the same purposes today. [BTW, that's "we" in the
sense of a communal knowledge among people of reasonable intelligence;
it cannot possibly be referring to "we" as you and I, John Fields and
Gene Nygaard, because one of us is too stupid to figure out how
balances work and too stupid to figure out how the scales used in
commerce are tested and certified, then and now.] The English word
"weight" didn't exist when the Romans first started using these
measures, and most of the Romans would never have used the English
word even if it had existed.

This is indeed a language-specific problem we've been discussing, one
shared by English with some other languages such as French. But all
languages don't have the same problems. When physicists using
Norwegian were shopping for their jargon word, presumably about the
sime time those using English were, the Norwegians didn't choose
'vekt' (at that time various other spellings such as vigt or wægt),
the cognate of the English word weight. Instead they chose a
different word, 'tyngde', to mean the force due to gravity.
They used the balance (which they also
called the libra) to measure unknown weights by comparison with accepted
standards, of course, and since they knew nothing of gravity there the
matter rested for a long time.

In other words they measured mass.

Accepted standards of mass. Not standards of force.

Just because you are too goddamn stupid to understand this, cannot
pick up a decent introductory physics book which will tell you how
balances work and what it is that we measure with them, doesn't change
the fact that what we measure with a balance is mass--not the force
due to gravity.

Remember, now, you have also already acknowledged that "pounds" when
it comes to "sausages" are units of mass. Don't try to backtrack when
you are finally starting down the right path.

You may notice that "uncia" is very similar to "ounce" and "lb" seems to
be a contraction from "libra", so it seems likely that somebody borrowed

Not only that, but the word "inch" comes from the same Latin
'uncia'--both being 1/12 part of another unit.
from somebody else; but no matter, the point is that these were, and
still are, units of weight, not mass.

They were units of weight. That does not mean that they are not units
of force.

On the other hand, calling them "units of weight" also does not imply
that they were not units of force--the only difference is that that
statement happens to be true, unlike your statement that they were not
units of mass. IOW, the truth of either statement is neither proved
nor disproved by calling them "units of weight"--you need to look at
the other evidence of how they were used.

Even more interesting, I think,
is that there is less than a 10% difference between the troy ounce and
the avoirdupois ounce, which leads me to believe that once upon a time
they were the same thing and that the variation in their weight is due
to their being "stepped on" continually for hundreds of years.

What is the difference between the troy ounce and the Roman uncia?
The avoirdupois ounce and the Roman uncia?

For an interesting perspective on the answers, you might go do a
search for the pyramidologists who will tell you exactly what these
units _should_ be, based on their interpretation of the dimensions of
Khufu's pyramid or Stonehenge or whatever.

What is the difference between the English foot and the Scottish foot
and the Norwegian 'fot' and the Swedish 'fot' and the Bavarian 'Fuß'
or the Paris 'pied'? There were considerable variations. There are
several different causes of these variations in any of the units, such
as some king wanting to increase the value of his money by shrinking
the weight unit while keeping th evalue per unit the same. One common
reason is to harmonize the units with these names with various
preexisting local units of a slightly different size. The English,
for example, once used 5000 feet to a mile just as the Romans did,
though this number was applied to feet of a different size than the
Roman feet. Then Elizabeth I, for example, gratuitously added 280
feet to a mile to harmonize it with the English furlong, making it 8
furlongs exactly.

I'd love to deal with your concluding comments at this time, but for
now you will have to settle for searching Usenet for the several times
I and others have discussed it in the past. We have other unfinished
business to deal with first, even in addition to that which is
mentioned above. You still need to provide us with the official
"physics" standard for a pound. You still need to acknowledge that
the pound is used as a unit of mass in physics.

It was interesting to note that we even have John Fields resorting to
the pontifications of a committee of government bureaucrats. What
TweetyBird whispered that URL into your ear? I've seen your research
skills--you didn't find it yourself. If you were capable of that, you
would have also found the "physics" standard for a pound.

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

Reg Edwards

Jan 1, 1970
0
.. . . and a feather and an astronaut both fall at the same rate, in metres
per second per second, on the moon.
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'd love to deal with your concluding comments at this time, but for
now you will have to settle for searching Usenet for the several times
I and others have discussed it in the past. We have other unfinished
business to deal with first, even in addition to that which is
mentioned above. You still need to provide us with the official
"physics" standard for a pound. You still need to acknowledge that
the pound is used as a unit of mass in physics.

---
You need to get over the idea that I "need" to comply with any of your
demands, in particular searching Usenet for examples of your past idiocy
and going on your wild goose chases. As a matter of fact, I don't even
need to acknowledge your worthless existence and you're just fortunate
that I've taken time out of my life to try to make you a little less
stupid than you were before.

Unfortunately, your pigheadedness and obvious inability to admit to your
personal shortcomings obviously makes learning, for you, a painful
experience in that when you're presented with something which is new to
you, you either have to deny that it's true in order to keep from
feeling indebted to whoever presented you with the knowledge or pretend
that you already knew it. In this case, you can't pretend that you knew
there was a difference between mass and weight because you got busted
early-on for saying they were the same thing, and now you can't get out
of it so you have to play the "No, it's not" game. Or something like
that, anyway. But the point is, it doesn't matter. You've already
proved yourself to be a liar and a troublemaker intent on
self-aggrandisement, so nothing you say can be taken at face value.
---
It was interesting to note that we even have John Fields resorting to
the pontifications of a committee of government bureaucrats. What
TweetyBird whispered that URL into your ear? I've seen your research
skills--you didn't find it yourself. If you were capable of that, you
would have also found the "physics" standard for a pound.

---
You've seen nothing but what you want to see and made sure you had
blinders on when the light got a little too bright for you.

I certainly have no compunctions about using information, wherever it
comes from, if it makes sense.

As for the URL, methinks you're a little upset because you didn't
stumble across it first; after all, that does seem to be the way you do
_your_ "research"... Find it in a URL somewhere and parrot it as if it
were gospel without even stopping to check it for accuracy or salience.

I've already given you references which anyone without an axe to grind
would find adequate to support a change in position, (even edicts from
authorities which you can't question) but since you can't bear to think
that you've been unhorsed you carry on, rolling around in the dirt,
grasping for that broken lance and hoping that some miracle will come
along and save you. It won't, and you know it, but that doesn't stop
you from being a blowhard poser.
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
---
You need to get over the idea that I "need" to comply with any of your
demands, in particular searching Usenet for examples of your past idiocy
and going on your wild goose chases. As a matter of fact, I don't even
need to acknowledge your worthless existence and you're just fortunate
that I've taken time out of my life to try to make you a little less
stupid than you were before.

You really are delusional, aren't you.

Gee, thanks for your altruistic concern for my well-being. Sorry that
I'm still so stupid that I still don't understand your claim that the
_official_ worldwide definition of the pound applies only to
"sausages" and that that definition does not apply to physics, where
God has apparently hardwired the knowledge of what a pound really is
into our brains, since you are unable to show me any other official
standard.

Of course, you don't "have" to do anything, John. You don't have to
participate in this thread. You don't have to have anybody believe
your claims about "sausages" and physics. It's just that if you
really expect people to believe the preposterous claims you've been
making, you might have to back them up with a little help from some
reasonable authority.

You are a dishonest, habitual liar, thinking that bluff and bravado
will carry you though. That may have worked for you in the past, but
that time for getting away with that is up. I have your number.

Of course, you could still prove me wrong. So let's review how you
could do that:

Suppose you tell me how a physicist is going to know whether or not
she has a "pound."

Tell me:

1. What exactly is the nature of the standard for this pound? Is it
something mechanical, something electrical, or what?

2. Who made this the standard for physics?

3. What is the standard for chemistry? Same as for sausages, or
what? For zoology? For agronomy? For electronics?

4. When exactly was it made the standard? Just the year will do--but
keep in mind that your inability to provide that minimal amount of
information will also be quite illuminative.

5. How exactly was this setting of the standard announced? How is
anybody going to know that it is the standard? Obviously not by
legislation, from the way you've been talking--so is it some
officially published standard by somebody having the authority to set
this standard? Cite the specific publication.

6. How did the defining agency acquire this authority to set the
standard?

7. Where is this standard kept, and who maintains it?

8. To whom does this standard apply? In other words, tell us not
only for whom the defining agency has the authority to make this
definition, but also tell us exactly for what purposes that defining
agency claims that its standard should be used, now that you have
admitted that the standard for sausages is the one I have pointed out
to you. In other words, answer this question not only geographically
(does it apply only in certain countries, for example?) but by field
of activity (does it apply in physics but not in chemistry, or what?)
and by membership is some group (AIP members, maybe? Eastern Orthodox
Christians or Tibetan monks? American Bowling Congress?).
Unfortunately, your pigheadedness and obvious inability to admit to your
personal shortcomings obviously makes learning, for you, a painful
experience in that when you're presented with something which is new to
you, you either have to deny that it's true in order to keep from
feeling indebted to whoever presented you with the knowledge or pretend
that you already knew it. In this case, you can't pretend that you knew
there was a difference between mass and weight because you got busted
early-on for saying they were the same thing, and now you can't get out
of it so you have to play the "No, it's not" game. Or something like
that, anyway. But the point is, it doesn't matter. You've already
proved yourself to be a liar and a troublemaker intent on
self-aggrandisement, so nothing you say can be taken at face value.
---


---
You've seen nothing but what you want to see and made sure you had
blinders on when the light got a little too bright for you.

I certainly have no compunctions about using information, wherever it
comes from, if it makes sense.

As for the URL, methinks you're a little upset because you didn't
stumble across it first;

Like I keep telling you, it doesn't cost you any more to pay
attention.

In this case, however, you already admitted above that you were in
fact paying attention, when I told you that if you are too impatient
to wait until I got around to it on this thread, you could go look up
the many times I have discussed that specific CGPM resolution in the
past. Is it just that you have trouble connecting the dots, unable to
figure out the basic information that I must have already known about
it at some time in the past if I had discussed it in the past?

You are the one who "stumbled" across it in the last week, likely when
some Tweety Bird whispered it in your ear (or more realistically,
emailed the URL to you). I am the one who can prove beyond a doubt
that I had already been discussing it on Usenet over six and a half
years ago, and many times since.

So, no, I'm certainly not upset because you "stumbled across it
first." Furthermore, I wouldn't have been upset even if it had been
true that you stumbled across it first. The fact that either of us
would have to "stumble" across it is, of course, one of the
significant factors I will deal with when I get around to discussing
it in detail.

after all, that does seem to be the way you do
_your_ "research"... Find it in a URL somewhere and parrot it as if it
were gospel without even stopping to check it for accuracy or salience.

I'm not the one who cited an obscure, long out-of-print list of
conversion tables by an unrenowned author, something which even more
stangely which provided no support for the claims being made in the
first place. That was John Fields.

Instead, it was a classic demonstation of reading comprehension at
only a rudimentary level, by someone too *DUMB* to have learned yet
that words can have more than one meaning.

Furthermore, you have shown no inaccuracy or irrelevance in the URL's
I cited. The only URL's I have cited are the official Notice from the
Federal Register of the official definitions of the yard and the pound
in the United States (published on two different sites), by the
National Bureau of Standards--predecessor of NIST, and URL's at NIST
and NPL, the national standards laboratories of the United States and
the United Kingdom.
I've already given you references which anyone without an axe to grind
would find adequate to support a change in position, (even edicts from
authorities which you can't question)

Methinks you have that all ass-backwards. Here's the way it should
be:

I've already given you references which anyone without an axe to grind
would find adequate to support a change in position, (even edicts from
authorities which you can't question)

(note that we now have a different person saying the same words)

Gene Nygaard
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
You really are delusional, aren't you.

---
If I were, that would be yet another stupid question of yours, wouldn't
it?
---
Gee, thanks for your altruistic concern for my well-being.

---
Actually, I don't care whether you live or die, so you needn't worry
yourself about whether I'm concerned with your well-being or not.
---
I'm still so stupid that I still don't understand your claim that the
_official_ worldwide definition of the pound applies only to
"sausages" and that that definition does not apply to physics, where
God has apparently hardwired the knowledge of what a pound really is
into our brains, since you are unable to show me any other official
standard.

---
I see you get zero on the subtle-O-meter. The reference to sausages was
to "laws and sausages". Go back and read it again and see if it makes
sense to you this time.
---
Of course, you don't "have" to do anything, John. You don't have to
participate in this thread. You don't have to have anybody believe
your claims about "sausages" and physics. It's just that if you
really expect people to believe the preposterous claims you've been
making, you might have to back them up with a little help from some
reasonable authority.

---
The "preposterous" claims I've been making are that weight and mass are
not the same thing, and that mass is measured in kilograms and its
related units while weight is measured in pounds and its related units.

Those _facts_ are easily verifiable.
---
You are a dishonest, habitual liar, thinking that bluff and bravado
will carry you though. That may have worked for you in the past, but
that time for getting away with that is up. I have your number.

---
You have nothing, you are nothing, and you'll always be nothing. A
little check of your posting history reveals that you've been starting
squabbles over weights and measures since about July 18 1996, and that
since that time you've accomplished nothing but to waste a lot of
bandwidth.
---
Of course, you could still prove me wrong. So let's review how you
could do that:

Suppose you tell me how a physicist is going to know whether or not
she has a "pound."

---
She will obviously "weigh" it, maroon.
---



---
Snipped a lot of claptrap and banality which I won't waste my time on...
---

Methinks you have that all ass-backwards. Here's the way it should
be:

I've already given you references which anyone without an axe to grind
would find adequate to support a change in position, (even edicts from
authorities which you can't question)

(note that we now have a different person saying the same words)

---
I think it's more interesting to note that you're parroting again.
Nothing new, nothing original, just you with that cookie-cutter
mentality desperately trying to get a leg up to adequacy.

Gene, I think I'm going to take John Woodgate's advice and dump you
right about now. There's really nothing of substance in any of your
posts, and your demeanor certainly needs a lot of work before it can be
considered acceptable by those of us in the non-troll population.

So, unless you can come up with something interesting (and, hopefully,
_on-topic_ for sci.electronics.design) this'll be my last post on this
thread.

Goodbye.

P.S., a little Haiku for ya:


Polly

Words fly past her ears.
She parrots them one by one.
No meaning, just sound.
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
I see you get zero on the subtle-O-meter. The reference to sausages was
to "laws and sausages". Go back and read it again and see if it makes
sense to you this time.

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

So, in other words, you totally *butchered* an attempt to play on the
familiar quote,

The less people know about how sausages and laws
are made, the better they'll sleep at night.
-- Otto von Bismarck

Why does it not surprise me that you attempt was so inept?

Clueless as you are, there is no danger whatsoever of your ever losing
a wink of sleep on this account.

Why don't you just fill us in with what you know about how the U.S.
law you were referring to, the one defining a pound as a unit of mass
equal to 0.45359237 kg, was made. Who was involved in that decision?
What were the alternatives? What were the politics involved?

Was it the town council of Pisek, North Dakota? No.

Was it the Texas state legislature? No.

Was it the Congress of the United States? No.

Why don't you just try to figure out exactly who it was. Go read the
full document, then report back to us.

Oh, nothing to add? You've already told us everything you know? On
top of that, you cannot understand what you read in that document?
Thought so, you clueless moron.

Good grief, I've already told you who was involved, and I've repeated
it again below. Zilch for reading comprehension.

Now it's your turn to go back and reread what you actually wrote (the
double indented stuff is what I wrote), and there is only one ">" in
your reply:

The only sensible interpretation as written is that you were saying
that that law applied to sausages, but that it did not apply to
physics. Do you see what I mean about butchering your attempted
reference?

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

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
ROFLMAO!!!!!!

So, in other words, you totally *butchered* an attempt to play on the
familiar quote,

The less people know about how sausages and laws
are made, the better they'll sleep at night.
-- Otto von Bismarck

Why does it not surprise me that you attempt was so inept?

Clueless as you are, there is no danger whatsoever of your ever losing
a wink of sleep on this account.

Why don't you just fill us in with what you know about how the U.S.
law you were referring to, the one defining a pound as a unit of mass
equal to 0.45359237 kg, was made. Who was involved in that decision?
What were the alternatives? What were the politics involved?

---
Well, even though you've been dumped I guess I can take pity on you and
give you a few extra minutes...

First, I must admit you have a remarkable grasp of the obvious, once
it's presented to you. Had I not given you the "laws" clue to "sausages
and laws" you'd still be wondering what the hell I was talking about,
although now it's all like you'd like to think you knew about it all
along, loser.

Second, the whole point about the "laws and sausages" thing is that I
neither know, nor care, how a "law" that defines any amount of weight
as a unit of mass was made, and pursuing the details of that misguided
legislation is something I'm not interested in doing because no amount
of legislation can make a pound a unit of mass. Ergo, why should I care
which fucking idiot declared that the Earth was flat or that the moon
was made out of green cheese and which group of fucking morons went
along with it?

Clue: I don't.
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
I neither know, nor care, how a "law" that defines any amount of weight
as a unit of mass was made, and pursuing the details of that misguided
legislation is something I'm not interested in doing because no amount
of legislation can make a pound a unit of mass. Ergo, why should I care
which fucking idiot declared that the Earth was flat or that the moon
was made out of green cheese and which group of fucking morons went
along with it?

Glad to know I'm in such good company!

Give him enough rope -----

|/|
| |
|/|
| |
|/|
(___)
(___)
(___)
(___)
(___)
// \\
// \\
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
\\___//
 
G

Gene Nygaard

Jan 1, 1970
0
I neither know, nor care, how a "law" that defines any amount of weight
as a unit of mass was made, and pursuing the details of that misguided
legislation is something I'm not interested in doing because no amount
of legislation can make a pound a unit of mass. Ergo, why should I care
which fucking idiot declared that the Earth was flat or that the moon
was made out of green cheese and which group of fucking morons went
along with it?

Let's just look at who fits John Fields'various classes of people:

Intelligent people:

John Fields

..... [don't think he's mentioned anyone else, other than vague terms
like some unidentified "people in this newsgroup"--GN]

Then there's the other class in the Fields taxonomy:

"Fucking idiot" and "groups of fucking morons":
=================================================

Gene Nygaard, naturally

http://www.blonde-chick-with-cute-pussy.com/sitemap/file1811.htm
pounds, avoirdupois kilograms 0.453 592 37


Christine N. Govoni Vogel, author of the out of print booklet of
conversion tables cited by John Fields--about which he indicated his
reading comprehension at a kindergarten level.

A.V. Astin, Director of U.S. National Bureau of Standards in 1959.

F.H. Mueller, Secretary of Commerce in 1959, who approved the official
Notice of this definition.

Dr. Barry N. Taylor, author of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST, successor agency to the National Bureau of
Standards), author of the 1995 NIST Special Publication 811, Guide for
the Use of the Internaitonal System of Units (SI).

The director of the National Physical Laboratory of the U.K. in 1959.

T.C. Mendenhall, who first redefined the U.S. avoirdupois pound as an
exact fraction of a kilogram back in 1893.

Henry VIII, King of England in the first half of the 1500s, who
redefined the avoirdupois pound as an exact fraction of the troy
standards of mass

Lewis V. Judson, author of _Weights and Measures Standards of the
United States: a Brief History_, National Bureau of Standards Special
Publication 447, Oct 1963 updated Mar 1976 and Ernest Ambler, acting
director of NBS.

The director of Measurement Canada, or whatever it was called then, in
1959.

The director of the national standards laboratory of South Africa in
1959.

The director of the national standards laboratory of Australia in
1959.

The director of the national standards laboratory of New Zealand in
1959.

The staffs of professional metrologists who assisted the directors of
all those national standards laboratories in 1959.

The Parliament of Canada in 1953.

The Parliament of the U.K. in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.

"The yard or the metre shall be the unit
of measurement of length and the pound or
the kilogram shall be the unit of measurement
of mass by reference to which any measurement
involving a measurement of length or mass
shall be made in the United Kingdom; and—

(a) the yard shall be 0·9144 metre exactly;

(b) the pound shall be 0·453 592 37 kilogram exactly."

The agency which published the Weights and Measures Regulations of
Australia.

The legal metrology groups in all these countries, the members of the
OIML (International Organization for Legal Metrology)
http://www.oiml.org, which are often separate from the national
standards laboratories, such as the U.S. National Conference on
Weights and Measures (an association of the state Weights and
Measurees officials).

The legislature in Ireland (not a party to the 1959 international
agreement) which passed a Weights and Measures Act so defining a pound
some time in the 1960s. Also the Irish Weights and Measures (Metric
Equivalents) Order, 1976, signed by LIAM Mac COSGAIR, Taoiseach.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZSI91Y1976.html

Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät der Universität Würzburg
http://www.wifak.uni-wuerzburg.de/fact98/appe.html

Every scientist and engineer anywhere in the world who ever used a
poundal (a unit not used by butchers and bakers and sausage-makers).

A.M. Worthington, the English physicist who invented the unit called a
slug, in the treatise "Dynamics of Rotation: An Elementary
Introduction of Rigid Dynamics" in which it was introduced in the
early 1900s (this quote from a later edition, a 1910 or 1920 reprint
of a 1906 edition, this part likely the same as the one in which the
slug was first used):

In the interests of clear teaching, the
convention (which I am glad to see has been
adopted in America) has been adhered to
throughout, of using the word ‘pound' when
a force is meant, and ‘lb.' when a mass is
meant, and I have ventured to give the name
of a ‘slug' to the British Engineer's Unit
of Mass, i.e. to the mass in which an
acceleration of one foot-per-sec.-per-sec.
is produced by a force of one pound.

[It is easy to see why his convention never gained a following--both
those using the mass unit and those using the force unit, which are of
course often the same people, would like to have both a name and a
symbol for both of these units, not a name for one and a symbol for
the other]

The above-mentioned "group of fucking morons" who used the poundal
includes, of course, the very same A.M. Worthington, inventor of the
slug, who tells us in the same book:

British Absolute Unit of Torque.–Since in the British
absolute system, in which the lb. is chosen as the unit
of mass, the foot as unit of length, and the second as
unit of time, the unit of force is the poundal, it is
reasonable and is agreed that the British absolute unit
of torque shall be that of a poundal acting at a distance
of 1 foot, or (what is the same thing, as regards turning)
a couple of which the force is one poundal and the arm
one foot. This we shall call a poundal-foot, thereby
distinguishing it from the foot-poundal, which is the
British absolute unit of work.


The English physicists William Thompson (for whom the SI unit of
temperature is named) and Peter Guthrie Tate in 1879, as quoted back
in 1997 by Jim Carr on alt.sci.physics, sci.engr, and sci.physics,
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

"By taking the gravity of a constant mass for the
unit of force it makes the unit of force greater in
high than in low latitudes. In reality, standards
of weight are masses, not forces. They are employed
primarily in commerce for the purpose of measuring
out a definite quantity of matter; not an amount of
matter which shall be attracted to the earth with a
given force."

<... description of merchant using spring scale to
defraud or be defrauded depending on latitude, etc
... Jim Carr>

"It is therefore very much simpler and better to
take the imperial pound ... as the unit of mass, and
to derive from it, according to Newton's definition
above, the unit of force."

Yes, John, I'm damn proud of the company I keep, proud to be a
"fucking idiot" or "fucking moron" or whatever you choose to call
me--you see, I know full well that this tells everyone much more about
you than about me.

Gene Nygaard
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein
 
J

John Woodgate

Jan 1, 1970
0
I read in sci.electronics.design that Gene Nygaard <[email protected]>
Yes, John, I'm damn proud of the company I keep, proud to be a "fucking
idiot" or "fucking moron" or whatever you choose to call me--you see, I
know full well that this tells everyone much more about you than about
me.

I disagree. You are just one big, bigoted bore. Just dry up!
 
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