Re: A weighty subject

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> Suddenly I'm worrying about the definition of g!  Is it the rate at which
> objects fall, or GM/R?  It can't be both!

You are correct; g is the acceleration of falling objects.
In my scheme mg is the weight in a laboratory on Earth's
surface. (It is what Hecht calls "effective weight".) If
I am to use the term as I wish, then an object could have
a different weight in a laboratory on the surface of the
Moon. I didn't realize that a confusion might arise here.
Conventionally weight is the gravitational force in
introductory textbooks; it is only *approximately* mg.

Leigh