[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
> Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>
> > I think this confuses the units for mass and weight. For
> example, if I
> > recall my high school physics correctly, kilogram is a unit of mass
> > while pound is a unit of weight. If you fly to the moon
> your mass in
> > kilograms stays the same but your weight decreases. In the metric
> > system I think weight would be measured in dynes or newtons
> while in
> > the English system mass would be measured in slugs.
>
I don't think there is such a thing as "the English system". There is an
Imperial System and an American System (I don't know the correct name
for the latter). Many units (such as pounds) are common between the two,
but many others (such as gallons) are different.
I've never heard of slugs being used in the Imperial System, but perhaps
that's because anyone interested in mass on this side of the Atlantic
went metric years ago.
Michael Kay
|