Re: The sign of g

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Larry Smith wrote:
> >  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/weight.htm
>
> John makes the case that g (vector) is "the acceleration of a nearby
> freely-falling object relative to your chosen reference frame" but I think
> he is then not able to write F_g = mg, which many want to do parallel with
> F_e = qE.

Look again.  I explicitly do equate F_g with W which is in turn
equal to mg.

What I can't do is equate those with GMm/r^2.

> I'll repeat what I've said when we had this discussion before (definition
> of weight): I don't care what convention we adopt, I just hope we all adopt
> the same one.  And I'd like to know what it is so I can teach my students
> consistently with the way y'all's students are being taught.
>
> So what is g _really_?

I remain comfortable with what I wrote on that web page.