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Re: pound mass and pound force



On 27 Aug 1997 Leigh Palmer praised astroners for not confusing people by
changing things too rapidly.

Astronomy provides my ideal model. Astronomers don't change their
conventions over periods as long as millenia! The result of such
regressive behaviour is that the literature of astronomy is accessible
clear back to the old guys like Hipparchus.

I do not know why I am placing myself on the other side of the barricade
again. But I can not help to notice that you are not practicing what you
preach. Heat as a "form of energy" was in textbooks, and in common use,
before the thermodynamic path-dependence of Q was clearly identified.

If this is true (?) then you should be the first among those who want to
rename Q in thermodynamics (more than no-to-noun and yes-to-verb). Don't
you want Millikan, Zemansky, and all other good old books, be accessible
to readers of many generations?
Very friedly yours, Ludwik Kowalski