Gene Nygaard wrote in message . ..
On 9 Dec 2003 10:34:34 -0800, (Fred the Red
Shirt) wrote:

Russell Kent wrote in message ...


I'm sorry, you're correct. I didn't mean to imply that they are the only unit of
mass. I was taught (perhaps incorrectly) that the unambiguous term for weight
(scientific meaning) in the English system was "slugs". Apparently it's also
"pounds force" now (it may have been them, too, and I've just forgotten it).

I think you mistyped. 'Slugs' are unambiguously a unit of mass.

Pounds are ambiguously a unit of force. Ambiguity exists because it
is popular in some disciplines to use a unit of mass defined (loosely)
as that mass which weighs one pound.

But you knew that.

Well, now, in this fuzzy dreamworld you inhabit, what exactly is the
standard for a pound?


HFC? In what fuzzy dreamworld that you inhabit is a slug ambiguous
but the pound is not?

If I say that I weigh 165 lbs (I'd be lying but that's not relevent)
it is ambiguous if I mean pounds force or pounds mass. But if I
say that atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 psi then I
unabiguously mean pounds force per square inch because pressure is
force per unit area.

If I say that I dropped a 15 slug rock on my foot that unambiguously
implies mass.

Is that really so hard to understand?

--

FF