Re: "acceleration due to gravity"

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, Leigh Palmer wrote:

> My point has been missed entirely. I did not talk about corrections
> at all. In my picture g is the quantity by which one multiplies the
> mass to find what I call the weight.

I think Leigh is too conservative here: g is the quantity by which
one multiplies the mass to find what *everyone* generally calls
the weight.  It's far simpler and more practical this way, but
more importantly, it's the *only* way to insure that g is well
defined and to insure consistency. As he notes you can not
determine which part is "truly gravitational" and which part is
"merely due to noninertial effects" anyway.  Indeed, the question
itself is meaningless from a practical point of view even within
the context of Newtonian mechanics.

John Mallinckrodt      mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm