• HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      Could you provide any source that states that a pound is a unit of force? Because the American National Standard Institute (here), aswell as Wikipedia and numerous other sources claim its a unit of mass.

        • lightnegative@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I love educational threads like these.

          Even though the original point was “using international standard units makes it clearer for everyone”

        • HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de
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          8 months ago

          Alright, lets look at the US Customary Units and their definitions. Here is the section called “Mass and Weight”. As you can see, everything is defined in metric units of mass. You won’t find even pound-force to be part of the Customary units. I couldn’t find any source saying that pound (not “pound-force”) is a unit of force. However, there was an agreement (I think in 1955) to define the pound in kg.

          it breifly at the end mentions “1 lb=0.45359237 kilogram” as well as “1 Newton=0.224809 pound force”

          That basically implies that lb (pound, imperial unit) is a unit of mass and “pound-force” (non-imperial unit, part of the British Engineering Units) is a unit of force. Thus, pound (on its own) is a unit of mass, right?

    • HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      Did you take into account that earth was heavier millions of years ago? Also, you would have to specify where on earth it weighed that amount.

      Anyway, pound is an imperial unit for mass, just like slug. The “pound-force” is not part of the imperial units, jut rather of the “English Engineering Units” that differentiate between pound-mass, pound-force, pound-foot and others.

      “Pound” is not a unit of force in ANY system. If you really meant force (I doubt that) you should have used lbf. Anyway, noone cares how many Newtons of force the earth exhibited on that animal, all the metric-using people in this thread are interested in its mass. All scales used to weigh something display kg (or pounds), so units of mass.