what is the conversion between lbs and kg

Whatever you say about standards! Tyres are still marked in the USA (and other places) with mixed units, ie inches and millimeters.

No. Infinity divided by four is infinity, an infinite number as many significant figures. Not twice.

Gene Nygaard

The page 13 you mentioned is the document page, it is page 17 of 34 in the .pdf file. The first reference is on page 2 of the document, p. 6 of 34 of the .pdf file.

A better version than the "pre-print" version you cited, the formatted printed version can be found at

There, the references are a footnote to section 4.1.1 at pdf page 5 (document page 2) and section 5.2.1 at page 16 (document page 13).

I will deal with your misinterpretation of that in response to your earlier post.

Gene Nygaard

Dear Gene Nygaard:

Glad to hear you have not gone the way of Franz Heymann!

David A. Smith

That isn't what it says.

Yes, the word "weight," like many words, has more than one meaning. There is no contradiction; this standard says quite clearly and distinctly "There is ambiguity in the use of the term "weight" to mean either _force_ or _mass_. " Do you have a reading comprehension problem? A word has two or more different meanings; that makes it ambiguous. In other words, there is "ambiguity" because of those different meanings.

It also is a qualified statement about the sciences, in "many fields of science and technology" weight is most often used with one of several "force of gravity" meanings.

We in the United States use not only those metric mass terms for weight in commerce, but we use the English mass terms for weight in commerce as well.

Note, for example, that there is one significant way in which the units in "troy system of weights" differ not only from their avoirdupois cousins, but from grams and kilograms as well: there are no troy units of force. They remain units of mass, always, as they always have been. There is no troy pound force and no troy ounce force, and there never have been any troy ounces force.

No details are overlooked. Furthermore, this redefinition was not made by politicians, but rather by the professionals, experts in the fields of metrology, in the national standards laboratories of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

But when the current international agreement was agreed upon in 1959, the avoirdupois pound in the United States had already been defined as a slightly different exact fraction of a kilogram for 66 years. In Canada, the definition adopted internationally in 1959 had already been adopted locally in their Weights and Measures Act of 1953.

There is no "redefining pounds as mass" rather than some other quantity than mass. Pounds have been units of mass since day one.

It is the pound-force which is the recent bastardization, not the other way around.

It is the pound-force which was NEVER a well-defined unit before the

20th century, when people first started setting values to use to define it, that concept of metrology (not of physics or chemistry or whatever) known as the "standard acceleraiton of gravity."

It is the pound-force which even today does not have an "official" definition.

Note also that the "slug" is a 20th century invention, a little-used unit of mass whose always-small usage in limited fields is diminishing. The slug did not exist when the pound was first redefined as an exact fraction of a kilogram in the United States, for example.

But even before that definition of the pound as an exact fraction of a kilogram, the absolute foot-pound-second had been invented back about

1879. In this system, of course, the "poundal" is the derived unit of force, the force which will accelerate the base unit of mass in this system at a rate of 1 ft/s².

Now, can you fill in the blank for us? The base unit of mass in this oldest coherent system of English units is the ___________. HINT: It is the "p" in this "fps" system.

Note again that when this system was invented, pounds everywhere were defined by independent standards (not the same standards everywhere, however). Nobody had yet redefined any pound as an exact fraction of a kilogram.

The poundal was then, and is now, a well-defined unit of force.

Note that you only need a "standard acceleration of gravity" if you use units which are based on Earth gravity, such as kilograms force or pounds force.

Note that not only is there is nowhere in the world where newtons are legal units for the sale of goods by weight. Nor should they be legal anywhere.

There is also nowhere in the world where pounds-force are legal units for the sale of goods by weight. Furthermore, there is nowhere in the world where pounds-force have ever been legal units for the sale of goods by weight. Nor should they be legal anywhere.

There is nothing "dead wrong" about it, scientifically or in any other way.

Those merchants, and the govrnment officials who regulate them, are much more rigorous, more uniform and consistent, than the various uses in different fields of science and technology. Weight never has a different meaning in commerce.

We who use the word "weight" in that meaning "own" the word, of course, and we are using it quite properly. We have a PRIOR CLAIM to this word by three-fourths of a millennium or so over those small priesthoods who have borrowed our word, and sometimes use it with a differnt meaning.

There is no good reason for us to change our usage to another word whose ambiguities would just create more confusion. Many of the meanings of the ambiguous word "mass" are more related to volume or to field of view and things like that, than they are to the quantity called "weight" in commerce. Another problem usage would be the "muscle mass" talked about by bodybuilders, referring to the shape and definition of those muscles. So we might as well stick with the word we have, weight, even though we all sometimes use that word with other meanings as well.

Of course, "mass" and "weight" are the same when we measure human body weight in the medical sciences, and use it to calculate our Body Mass Index. Or the body weight of other animals as well, in zoology and paleontology and veterinary science.

They are the same when NASA's rocket scientists and engineers tell us that the weight of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module at liftoff of its ascent stage was 10,776.6 lb.

They are the same when any scientist talks about atomic weight, molecular weight, formula weight, and the like, quantities now often measured in the "unified atomic mass unit". Like I said above, the usage of the word "weight" in the sciences is much less consistent and uniform than the usage in commerce.

Fortunately, people such as gold merchants have long been a whole lot smarter than you are.

We should not want to measure a quantity that varies with location for this purpose, and we have never done so.

It is perhaps a fortunate accident that for the first 7000+ years that people were weighing things, the only weighing devices anybody had were those mass-measuring balances. Even as recently as 200 years ago, those are the only weighing devices anybody ever used.

Obviously, you have no idea what the term "to measure" means.

You don't figure out what it measures by looking at it in the situations where it doesn't work. You simply need to find a different method if you want to make these measurements when balances don't work, or accelerate your balance by some method other than gravity.

You need to look at what it measures when it does work. Let's assume to simplify the argument that I have a classical two-pan equal-arm balance, of the type often depicted as the Scales of Justice, for example.

First, assume I have a bar of gold in Hammerfest, Norway. It takes a

200 g weight, a 100 g weight, a 50 g weight, a 25 g weight, two 10 g weights, a 2 g weight, a 5 dwt weight, a 1 dwt weight to balance my bar of gold. How much force does that bar of gold exert due to gravity, in any force units you choose to use (note that I pointed out above that troy ounces are never units of force).

Now, assume I take the whole works to Quito, Ecuador, and set up the scale again. It takes a 200 g weight, a 100 g weight, a 50 g weight, a 25 g weight, two 10 g weights, a 2 g weight, a 5 dwt weight, a 1 dwt weight to balance my bar of gold. How much force does that bar of gold exert due to gravity, in newtons? How much difference is there in the amount of force it exerts here in Quito, compared to the force it exerted in Hammerfest?

If, as you claim, we use those balances to "measure" force, then you'd damn sure better be able to give us the answer from the information given.

BTW, what is the troy weight of that bar of gold, as those much-smarter-than-you gold buyers would express it?

If they had been foolish enough to do what you have suggested, how much "weight" would that bar of gold lose in moving it from Hammerfest to Quito? What is that worth at today's market price of gold, assuming that there existed a "troy ounce force" which was used instead of the troy ounces in today's prices. You can assume that you'd use 32.16 ft/s², one of the values sometimes used to define the pound force, to define these new units called a troy ounce force.

That unit is also sometimes used under a different name--it is a "technical atmosphere".

Of course, one advantage of the metric system is that it is still fully supported and updated. The keepers of our standards have been telling us for nearly half a century to stop using those obsolete kilograms force.

Nobody will ever bother to tell us to stop using pounds force, without telling us to stop using pounds all together.

P.S. Hi, Fred!!!!!!!!!!!

Gene Nygaard

There is another type of measure that is also very ancient and that is the measure of mass. . . . As time passed, each nation and region developed its own standard masses against which unknown masses could be compared. The chief such unit is called pound in English, from a Latin word meaning "a weight." Isaac Asimov Realm of Measure,l960

No. It was not real. Go retake your political science classes, and learn what it means to "pass a law" in a bicameral legislature. There never was anything to "repeal".

Furthermore, the bill in Indiana did not say anything at all about pi.

The only remaining question is, where is your education most deficient? In political science, or in metrology?

Gene Nygaard

Gentlemen of the jury, Chicolini here may look like an idiot, and sound like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: He really is an idiot. Groucho Marx

Infinity, great counting skills there, LOL!

Sure, never said they weren't.

I ran into some hose fittings once on a European hydraulic machine that had threads that were metric in diameter, but pitched in threads-per-inch. Now those were hard to find!

Don Kansas City

1) As to the balance beam measuring mass, and thus your conclusion from it that man has measured mass for all time in his commerce-

If you have no acceleration but only have masses sitting on your balance beam in space, your balance beam simply cannot work. That says - if you have only mass and no acceleration, there is NO movement of the masses on your beam irrespective of the size of the masses, and thus you and mankind CANNOT and ARE NOT measuring the quantity of mass. How can you measure, if there is no acceleration? In general - if there is no change in any indicator (position, etc.) when the parameter you desire to measure is on the pans, then that device does not measure that parameter. Yes or no?

You are using force (as in gravity acting on a mass, called weight) to indirectly find mass. Not directly - indirectly

However, if you have forces (weights) on your balance beam, you will always find a weight by using a reference weight. Not finding force indirectly - directly. And if there is no mass, the measurement is zero. Force holds in the end conditions - mass does not.

2) you argue in circles on all your points- , i.e, "it is a mass we use, and I say I measure a mass, thus it is proven that it is a mass we use ." Thus your arguments about the why of mass in commerce have NO validity. (FWIW, That is why the proof rules for statistics also require proving the opposite.)

Your circular argument about mass on a balance beam goes as follows:

"I use a mass on one side of the beam, and balance it with a mass on the other side, therefore I am measuring masses. We therefore use mass, not weight, in commerce."

You, and all the metrologists in the world, can make the same circular argument about gravity, force, or phlogiston fumes, e.g., some others equally as valid.

"I use a gravity on one side of the beam, and balance it against a like gravity on the other side, and therefore I am measuring gravity. Therefore we use gravity, not mass, in commerce."

"I use a mass acted on by a force on one side of the beam, and balance it against a force on the other side of the beam. Therefore we use force, not mass, in commerce."

couple 1) with 2), and force wins

3) As to what that force really is - If you take your balance beam to Quito and then to Hammerfest, you measure the force on side of the beam vs the force on the other side - forces cancel/balance. You also indirectly measure a mass in reverence to another mass -masses cancel/balance,

you also measure the earth's centripetal force on both objects relative to each other - forces balance/cancel,

you measure the pull of Jupiter on the two objects - pull balances/cancels

you can say you measure anything acting on that balance beam, because your definition is circular

4) The argument that a balance beam measures mass because weight changes due to location on the planet earth is erroneous when the gravity constant creating that force is specifically defined - and it is. If weight is defined as mass times the defined "g" (32.1740 ft/sec^2 - fps), then that is the same all over the planet. Quito or Hammerstad - at 20,000 feet or at the pole. 32.1740 - not 32.100 at 5000 feet or 32.2 in Death Valley

You, however, erroneously define weight as the pull of "the sum of earth gravity and centripetal force as gravity acting on a mass", and your argument fails from that error.

The downward force varies with latitude and elevation , but the constant "g" used to determine weight does not vary with location, nor does the mass.

Weight as defined by F=mg, g=32.1740 does not vary with location.

see FS 376B page 12 -excerpt below "standard acceleration of

gravity (g) meter per second squared (m/s2) 9.806 65"

The pound may be legally defined as a unit of mass. The legal system is the result of compromise and laws passed, not science - The legal system also defined pi as equal to 4. Legal does not make it scientific fact, no matter how much weasel wording the bureaucrats use.

5) As to your comments on the FS 376B METRIC OPERATION stds committee, a copy of which is on my computer for use in ANSI committee work-

(FS 376B was directly derived from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standard for Metric Practice ANSI std 268-1992. Our ANSI committees got that crap shoved down our throats politically, and we tossed that piece of crap right back up the chain and back to that committee, and they had to revise it to get it to work.) "Foreword

This standard was developed by the Standards and Metric Practices

Subcommittee of the _Metrication_ Operating Committee"

"1. SCOPE

This standard lists preferred _metric_ units (See 4.1) recommended for use

throughout the Federal Government. It gives guidance on the selection of

metric units required to comply with the provisions of the Metric Conversion

Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-168), as amended by the Omnibus Trade and

Competitiveness Act of 1988 (P.L. 100-418), and Executive Order (EO)

12770 of July 25, 1991."

and - on Page 13 - as I cited before

FS 376B, Page 13

"5.2.1 Mass (weight)

NOTE: There is ambiguity in the use of the term "weight" to mean either force or mass. In

general usage, the term "weight" nearly always means mass and this is the meaning given the

term in U.S. laws and regulations. Where the term is so used, weight is expressed in

kilograms in SI. In many fields of science and technology the term "weight" is defined as the

force of gravity acting on an object, i.e., as the product of the mass of the object and the local

acceleration of gravity. Where weight is so defined, it is expressed in newtons in SI."

and also from page 13 -

" from to multiply by

slug kilogram (kg) 14.593 90

I assume you can read the above excerpt from 376B

and the one below

measurement.

Wrong.

You aren't measuring anything. Your tool isn't working. You need to find a different tool.

A liquid-in-glass thermometer doesn't work when it is so cold that the liquid freezes, or so hot that the glass melts. But when it does work, we use it to measure temperature.

But the "reference weights" EVERYBODY uses are of a known mass. The amount of force they exert due to gravity is generally unknown, and irrelevant.

No. My argument doesn't go that way at all. In fact, it doesn't matter if the scale used in commerce is a spring scale, or a piezoelectric load cell device, or whatever, rather than a balance.

The important thing is that for their use in commerce, these scales are calibrated to measure mass in the very location in which they are used. Even more important is that they are tested and certified, in situ, for their accuracy in measuring mass in that location. Not for their accuracy in measuring force--that is totally irrelevant.

Once again, you exhibit your weird notion of what "to measure" means.

A ruler won't do you much good in the dark. That doesn't mean we use a ruler "to measure" light.