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Re: what do you call this in English?
Posted:
Jul 16, 1999 1:25 PM
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In article <932007651.888.83@news.remarQ.com>,
"William L. Bahn" <wbahn@uswest.net> wrote:
> Pounds is an ambiguous unit - it is officially recognized by the
standards
> setting organizations that the meaning must be determined by context.
In the
> lack of a context, the default is a unit of force (roughly equal to
4.45
> Newtons).
I'd say that in the lack of a context, the default is the primary, legal
definition: a pound is a unit of mass, for the last 40 years exactly
equal to 0.453539237 kg, and in the U.S. defined as a slightly different
fraction of a kilogram for 66 years before then.
That is by far the way in which pounds are most commonly used, as in the
net weight of foods at the supermarket. (Note that "weight" means mass
more often than it means any particular kind of force.)
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/weight.htm
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