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poundals



At 09:47 AM 10/18/99 -0400, Michael Edmiston wrote:

When we had balances reading only in grams, we didn't have the new
problem of "balances" that can give readings in ounces, pounds,
newtons, etc. Some do not offer readings in newtons, and they
interpret ounces and pounds as "ounce-mass" and "pound-mass."

There is a creature called a _poundal_ which is a unit of mass, defined to
be equal to 0.45359 kilograms. This is useful (pedagogically and
practically) when one wants a unit of mass that corresponds to the
vernacular notion of "a pound of stuff" while preserving the pound as a
unit of force. I suppose we could define an "ouncel" similarly.

Sad note: The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (otherwise
an unusually fine dictionary) gets this exactly horribly backwards,
speaking of poundals of force and pounds of mass. Yecchhhhh.


______________________________________________________________
copyright (C) 1999 John S. Denker jsd@monmouth.com