From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 16:04:59 MDT
--- spike66 <spike66@attbi.com> wrote:
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> >>Foot pounds can be a unit of energy too, since it is
> >>a force times a distance. But do spare us the archaic
> >>units, all of you, and state energy in terms of joules,
> >>or newton meters.
> >
> > Call me archaic, will you? Sounds like bait for another flame
> war... ;)
> > I thought personal attacks were against list rules.... ;)
>
> MIKE! Do let those units perish, fer cryin out loud.
>
> Reason: they cause too much confusion because the
> same name being used for a pound mass and a pound
> force.
You think the foot-pound is confusion. Back in my day, we had to make
do with the cobble-cubit. Can you imagine calculating
cobble-cubits^2/moment^2, when each and every jurisidiction had its own
standard for each?
>
> Since I know you are studying engineering, you are
> forced to learn the English system, however here is
> a tip that will help you not goof the Gc and miss
> the answer by a factor of 32. Simply throw out the
> unit pound mass. As soon as you see pounds mass,
> immediately convert to slugs. Then go ahead and
> use the pound force as the amount of force needed
> to accelerate one slug one foot per second^2. When
> the problem is finished, convert slugs back to
> pounds mass, if necessary. That way, all your
> equations work the same, regardless of their
> being posed in English or sensible units. A
> pound works like a big newton and a slug works
> like a big kilogram.
>
> Honest, just do it that way and you will always
> get the right answers. American engineering
> students need to learn only one system.
And here I was using cobble force in my conversion. Of course, there is
no TNT equivalent to cobble-cubits^2/second^2, being a pre-Nobel
measurement.... ;)
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