[Info-vax] OT: Force vs. weight (was: Where is EISNER:: and who funds it?)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2021-12-27 14:47, alanfe... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 5:49:19 AM UTC-5, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2021-12-26 19:25, alanfe... at gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Saturday, December 25, 2021 at 6:35:26 PM UTC-5, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>> On 2021-12-24 04:40, alanfe... at gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:55:40 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>>>>> In article <00B6DA8D... at SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-
>>>>>> @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>> Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European freinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?
>>>> I think I might have hit reply instead of follow up. But instead of a
>>>> long rant, I'll just observe that newtons is force.
>>>>
>>>> And newtons are defined as kg * m/2^s. Anyone using SI units thus have a
>>>> pretty easy time to figure out how many newtons of force he asserts,
>>>> based on his mass. If you are lazy, you just add a "0" after your
>>>> weight, and you have approximately how many newtons you are asserting at
>>>> the surface of the earth. If you want to be a bit more precise you
>>>> multiply your weight by 9.81, and if you want to be very precise, you
>>>> need to know the actual gravity at the point where you are, and you
>>>> multiply your mass by that to find the force. (But then you need to also
>>>> really figure out what your mass is, which isn't that easy to figure out.)
>>>>
>>>> And of course, if we move to the moon, our weight, and the force we
>>>> assert will be all different.
>>>>
>>>> But in the most simplistic terms, since if you step on a scale, you get
>>>> a number for your weight, in kg, just multiplying it by 10 is usually
>>>> good enough for newtons.
>>>>
>>>> Do you have any other "difficult" questions for your European friends?
>>>>
>>>> And while we're at it, how many lbf do you weight? And what is lbf?
>>>
>>> You bet! I weigh myself every morning and can tell you in an instant. I'd rather not on a public forum though! And I don't even have to add a 0, which is not quite accurate enough in my book. If memorizing 32 and 212 is too much effort (which you don't even need to know the majority of the time you use temperature), then multiplying by 9.8 certainly is! Yes, you can figure it out, but if you go by that standard, neither system is superior.
> 
>>> And it's lbs., not lbf. Well, I suppose you could use lbf. I'd have to look it up. Not really relevant here.
>> No. I was talking about lbf, *not* lbs.
>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force))
>>
>> The parallel of N vs. kg.
> 
> Picky, pikcy, picky. No one in America calls it lbf. We call it lbs. You get on the scale, write down the number, and you put lbs. to the right of it. This lbs. vs. lbf. for the purpose of this discussion is a difference without a distinction. WGAF? And no conversions. We get the right number from the start. Maybe lbs. vs. lbf. is good for engineers. IDK. I'm not an engineer and am not sufficiently up on the subject to say. Just a guess. Regardless, when Americans weigh themselves they use lbs. When you look at products in a store sold be weight, it's lbs. No one in America uses lbf. in ordinary day-to-day living.

Now, wait a minute. Why did you ask for Europeans wight in newton if you 
then call me picky when I ask for your weight in lbf. It is *not* the 
same as lbs.

You really need to understand what you ask for, and don't get into 
something and then call others picky when they just talk about the exact 
thing *you* asked about.

When people talk about weight in Europe, they normally use kilogram, and 
not newton, because newton is *force*. And yes, you can argue that 
weight and force as equivalent. Because weight is usually meant as mass 
at earth gravity. I weight much less at the moon... But I have the same 
mass.

You seem to not understand what lbf is at all. Read the link I gave to 
Wikipedia. If you use SI units for gravity, then lbf is roughly lbs*10 
(more exactly 9.81, and yet more exact if you figure out exactly what 
the gravity is where you are).
The number on your scale gives you lbs, yes. Just as my scale gives me 
kilogrammes.

I could ask the obvious question why you even asked about my weight in 
newton in the first place. Did you think it would be some magic, 
complicated number that I wouldn't know? I suspect most europeans know 
their weight in newton, since it's pretty much their weight in kilos, 
with an added 0. And pretty much everyone knows their weight in kilos.

> And you said "vs." Didn't you mean "is"? That's how I read. A conversion! But I can handle it without bitching about it. In fact, I don't think I even noticed it until writing this post.

You asked about Europeans weight in newtons. Noone measure their weight 
in newtons. Newtons is force. But obviously there is a clear correlation 
between what you consider your weight, and the force you exercise.

So it really is "vs". You asked for weight in N, while we normally 
measure weight in kg. So I tossed the question back to you about lbf, 
and you don't even understand the difference between lbs and lbf.

But the relationsship between kg and N is exactly corresponding to the 
difference between lbs and lbf. Hence the "vs".

>> The question seemed very relevant, as you asked if Europeans could tell
>> how much they weighted in N.
> 
> You want to be picky? It's weigh, not weighted.

I'm not a native English speaker. If you really want to get out of this 
discussion by trying to find spelling errors, or incorrect application 
of temporal forms then it would seem you really don't have much more to 
say on the topic.

>>>> Force in pounds for acceleration expressed in m/s^2 ? So if you want it
>>>> in lb * foot/s^2, there isn't even a unit? How messed up is this thing?
> 
> I was talking about weighing yourself. Some claimed that the proper unit is N, as that is the SI base unit. Dynes, somehow, despite being a totally legitamite metric unit is somehow deprecated. In fact, it was Helbig:

N is the SI unit for force. This shouldn't be that hard...
When you start tossing weight around, it's a different thing.

> And the acceleration bit. Who's actually doing this? Why are you multiplying a force by an acceleration anyway? That makes no sense!

1 Newton is defined as the force required to accelerate a mass of 1 kg 
by 1 m/s/s.

It has everything to do with acceleration.

How would you define a unit for force?

>> And the conversion between kg and N is rather simple on the surface of
>> the earth, as I observed.
> 
> So when a European has to do a conversion to Fahrenheit, it's a nearly insurmountable task. What a PITA! Oh, but if you have to do a "simple conversion" in your own system, suddenly it's okay. I get on the scale and I immediately get a number in lbs. and that's it. I could flip the bars and get kg, but I grew up in a country that uses lbs., so I use pounds. Everything I read or see in video says lbs., so I go with lbs. So what? No conversion is involved! And kg is a unit of mass. Weight is a force. Again, this is picky, picky, picky. Well, I find it slightly annoying, but I get by.

I see that you don't get it. What I don't get is why you then try to 
pick a fight about it.

>> The conversation between lbs and lbf is easy if you use SI units for
>> gravity, but becomes more convoluted if you use ft/s^2.
>>>>> Back to Fahrenheit: It has its advantages. When the temperature is in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s -- each range conjures up a different feeling. The Celsius degree is too big for that. "But is based on 0 and 100 for water!" So F what [pun not intended!]. How often do you even think of those when you are involved with the temperature. You've got two numbers: 32 and 212. Is this too hard to memorize? And when you hear those numbers you know it's temperature-related. 0 and 100 could be 'most anything.
>>>> There is absolutely no problems looking at celcius in ranges and figure
>>>> out a feeling based on that. Most people do. Nonsense to think you can't.
>>>
>>> Really? I'm talking ranges of 10. In Celsius if you say it's in the 20s, what does that really mean? Anywhere from 68 F to 86 Fahranheit. Is it hot out or comfortable? If I say 70s F, it's comfortable or slightly warm. Sure, if you give a particular number, like 23 deg C., you can have a feel for it. But in ranges of tens, F is clearly better.
>> Of course I have a feeling about when it's in the 20s. I'm actually
>> amazed that you think that I would not.
>> 20s is acceptable summer temperature. I don't have to wear that much
>> clothes. High 20s and I might start thinking it's getting warm. But
> 
> C'mon. 20 C is 68 F, just a tad cool. 29 C is 84 F. Definitely warm. Too warm.
> 
> Ah! High 20s! You have to add the "high". In F., OTOH, you can just say 80s. Now tell me of the two which is simpler?

Yeah. And I've been enough in the US to have seen "in the high 80s" 
plenty of times as well.

Really, from that point of view there is none that is simpler. It's 
amazingly ignorant to think that I wouldn't bracket temperatures to make 
for easier classifications. And I do that in 10s. -10 to 0, 0 to 10, 10 
to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 40. I really do that.
And I suspect pretty much any person does outside of the US. I know that 
all the people I've met do it.

> I think the Celsius degree is too large for everyday use. When I nudge the thermostat in my home, I do it by a single degree at a time. In C I'd have to use 1/2. Oh, but multiplying by 2 is too much of a pain for you.

I nudge by a single degree. Definitely fine grained enough. Actually, I 
could just as well do it 2 at a time as well, and would still be 
perfectly happy.

If you want to do things at such small intervals, I will not stop you. 
The temperature scales do have fractions, so there is nothing preventing 
you from doing it as fine grained as you wish. Why are you not doing it 
by half F degrees then? After all, that is even finer control.

>> Humans are rather flexible, and deal with systems pretty well. It's just
>> that it's nicer to have systems that are easy to do conversions on
>> without having to do an excessive amount of math, which is why the rest
>> of the world stopped using imperial units. Believe it or not, but until
>> 200 years ago, we all did it the same way the US still does. But the
>> rest of the world moved on.
> 
> What conversions? Who's doing conversions? YOU GUYS are. I'm not doing any -- unless I'm cooking!

Or doing scientific work... Or talking to anyone outside the US. Or 
whatever...

> Also, the rest of the world didn't put men on the moon. The rest of the world doesn't have the primary currency of the world. The rest of the world doesn't define and set the base units of the metric or SI system, AFAIK. Yes, there's that kg mass in Paris, but that's finally been replaced with a better standard. Maybe other countries are involved. I don't know for sure. The rest of the world doesn't have several elements named after American entities: Americium, Berkelium, Californium, Tennessine, Lawrencium (a lab in California). Can any other country beat that? The U.S. used to be the leader in particle physics. Well, not so much anymore. Bummer.
> 
> So "the rest of the world" means nothing. Hey, use your system. I don't really care. I'm not telling you to switch. But YOU are telling ME to switch, to which I say, NO! Besides, there's plenty of metric use in the U.S.: beverages, tools, caliber, liquor, engine displacement, focal length, lens diameters, film widths, Apple brags that their new iMacs are 11.5 mm thick. Oh, sorry, the meter is preferred. mm is fine and in this case greatly preferred by me. (Sorry, Philip!) Drugs, both legal and illegal. All metric or a mix. And IMO there's no reason for Americans to switch to C for non-lab stuff.

The world still also use the x86 and Windows. Which most people would 
agree are not exactly the best systems around. Does that prove anything 
more than crappy stuff can still rule the world. Nothing have to be 
good. But is that enough of an excuse to not do things better?

You tell me.

And no. I'm not telling you to switch. I'm merely observing that in the 
long run, it would help you (or rather your kids). But my primary 
response was because you questioned if Europeans would know their weight 
in newtons, which they do, and during this it became apparent that you 
don't even know what a newton is. Oh well.

   Johnny