On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 19:54:06 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 18:22:24 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 17:23:12 GMT, Richard Clark
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:45:38 GMT, Gene Nygaard
wrote:

So what happens when you get serious about your weight and go to the
doctors office or the gym and weigh yourself on one of those platform
type beam balances?

Would your pounds be different on the moon? By how much?

A balance, by implicit definition again, consists of comparing two
masses under the influence of Gravity. Given it is a bridge, in a
sense, the constant of Gravity is discarded from both sides and mass
is compared only. It is a convenience of earthly expectations (and a
defunct system of measurement) that the scale is marked in pounds.

The matter of convenience is in the other direction, stupid; we're
willing to substitute cheapness for accuracy in what we want to
measure on those unreliable bathroom scales. They aren't any more
accurate for measuring force than they are for measuring mass on
Earth; haven't you ever weighed yourself on your mother's scale or
somewhere else and found it differed from yours at home by several
pounds? Do you automatically assume you've gained or lost that much
weight.

However, you do ask for a reference and acknowledge the NIST as a
reputable source (many here ignore this commonplace):
http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/...constants.html

There is absolutely nothing about pounds on this page. So don't be
bull****ting us.

That is the whole point. You don't see pounds there for mass do you?

I don't see pounds as units of mass because this page just lists units
in the International System of Units.
http://w0rli.home.att.net/youare.swf

Show me something from NIST saying that pounds are not units of mass.
Or from some textbook.

That's because pounds are not a unit of mass. They are a unit of
weight which is NOT a constant throughout the universe (nor on earth
for that matter).

Just your say-so? That's the best you can do?

The link:

is quite specific to the matter.

Not a link directly on the page above; maybe on one of the links
there.

There is absolutely nothing about pounds on this page either. You are
still bull****tiing.

Have you tried loosing weight?

To quote a sge (you know who he is) in this newsgroup:

If you huff down a package of Ex-Lax you would take
care of the doctor's advice with a lot of "loose" weight.
(Language is fun ;-)

One of the supreme ironies comes in the form of the unstated
conditional. In your regard, it is pounds is intimately tied to the
gravitational constant (mass and G).

They are? I asked you for some citation proving that pounds are not
units of mass. You have not done so.

Uh-huh. In equal measure, I couldn't "prove" that sparrows' tongues
are also "not" units of mass. Well, there are many here who's minds I
cannot change, you simply have to go to the end of that line. ;-)

I can, OTOH, prove that pounds are indeed units of mass.

That will prove that you are flat-out wrong in your claim that they
are not.

Just for practice, consider the troy system of weights. Unlike their
avoirdupois cousins, and unlike grams and kilograms, the troy units of
weight have never spawned units of force of the same name. They are
always units of mass; a troy ounce is exactly 31.1034768 grams, by
definition. There is not and never has been any troy pound force or
troy ounce force.

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