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From John Gastineau:
I seem to have ignited a firestorm. I do enjoy this.
Herb Schulz wrote:
Sorry but "magnitude of the acceleration due to gravity on the surface of
the earth" is the correct title. The implication is that when gravity is
the ONLY force acting on the object the object will have an acceleration
with magnitude 'g'. If the name is too long for you that's why we use 'g'!
I have to respectfully disagree here. As Jim Green said, in dynamics
the "g" term always ends up on the "F" side of F=ma. As such, g
isn't an acceleration, but relates the gravitational force to the
gravitational "charge" (the mass)....
From the discussion there's pretty much a consensus that the terms
as used now are misleading. What to do? Freefall acceleration for
the latter case seems easy to say. But what to call 9.8 N/kg? Are we
comfortable with local gravitational constant, even though it isn't
constant? (I guess the particle types out there won't be troubled by
variable constants...)