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Re: operational F, m, and a

At 02:39 PM 10/16/01 -0400, Michael Edmiston wrote:
Some have said that F = ma is not the way to define force.

True.

However, that is the way it is officially defined. So how
come are we arguing about how force is defined, when IUPAP and NIST and
similar agencies world wide have already agreed on the definition.

Maybe the _unit_ of force is defined in terms of mass and acceleration.
But you simply cannot define the _concept_ of force that way. F=ma is not
even exactly true, relativistically speaking! You can't take something
that is not true and make it true by definition.

Meter, kilogram, and seconds are base units for SI units. Then we have more
units derived from the base units.

There's more to physics than dimensional analysis.