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The internet wouldn't allow this
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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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FFS, just adopt the metric system already. And "lb" is not a force unit. Also don't capitalize unit abbreviations unless named after scientists.
"pound foot" is the most intuitive name for a unit of force imaginable!
How much force? One pound of the foot. Easy!
Red Foreman agrees... "one pound of my foot in your ass"
It's one pound per foot you moron!
/s
Not just any old foot, a square one
It's a derived unit of torque. Pound is already a measure of force.
Of this, you and I, are quite aware.
The Joke, however, is in the air.
Actually pounds are a unit of force
Pounds~newtons
Slugs~ kilograms
Pounds are a unit of money.
lbf(poundforce) is a misnomer, it’s actually the pressure required to stamp the King’s portrait into a £1 coin. Slightly changes with each monarch – or by a lot whenever they switch to cheaper materials because of devaluation. The frequent redefining of poundforce is now a major consequence of Brexit. /sFairly sure there isn't any money with the king's face on yet. So we're still on the Elizabeth standard for now.
It's confusing, since "pound" is used for both force and mass.
1 lbm is roughly 0.45 kg
1 lbf is the force required to accelerate a 1 slug (32.2 lbm) mass 1 ft/s^2.
I know slugs are just snails without shells, but they don't need to go faster
I don't know what the imperial system standards committee was up to, but I've never met a slug that was 32.2 lbm
You wouldn't know her, she goes to a different school.
It's understandable that you don't understand a measurement system you're not familiar with, but us imperials understand it just fine.
Sure. How much does water in a 1ft × 2ft × 3ft aquarium weigh?
In metric, an equivalent calculation is 30 cm × 60 cm × 90 cm = 3 × 6 × 9 dm^3 = 162 𝑙 ≡ 162 kg of water, and if you're pedantic, the weight is around 1620 N or closer to 1590 N for 𝑔 = 9.8 m·s^-2^. All calculated in my head.
A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, close enough to 7.5. 1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs ≈ 25/3.
6 * 7.5 = 45 gallons
45 * 25/3 = 375 lbs -- easy mental math. Sure, the "accurate" answer is 373.87 lbs, but the aquarium probably isn't filled with distilled water, perfectly dimensionally accurate, or filled to that exact capacity.
Oh god this is what we mean
Oh just wait until you see imperial hex screws. In metric you get them in screwdriver size relating to mm. US hex screws are like 16/64 of an inch or 5/16 of an apple. And of course they don't relate to metric at all and you can't use the same tools.
It's only arbitrarily easy since water has a density of 1 kg/l in metric, as it was designed to do so. If you happened to know the density of water is 62.2 lb/ft^3 then the equation is roughly 123*60 which is 360 lb. 372 if you can actually paid attention to what common core was trying to teach. If the material was anything other then water the math would be just as difficult to do in imperial or metric.
Metric is still far superior as the harmonized units make density in particular much easier to convert between. About the only thing imperial is better at is thread pitch of screws. I will also maintain that when describing human temperatures for weather Fahrenheit is a superior scale, but that's just more personal preference and experience then any rational basis.
Mercifully, g=9.8 everywhere on Earth's surface, so we use weight interchangeably with mass, but yes, we should weigh ourselves in Newton: "I need to lose 10kg, so I can reach my ideal weigh of 700N" :P
Big nope. It depends not only on height, but also on density of stuff under ground.
The pedantry in this post is so dense you would need a torch to cut through it
I'd say it's more of a "small yes" than a "big nope."
While gravity does vary, it goes from about 9.76 to about 9.83.
All of which does, in fact, round to 9.8
On ISS it's 8.722, but it's constantly falling.
Everything experiences different gravity (and “apparent gravity”) in space. We should pass a treaty of using metric only there, if only to avoid losing more spacecraft.
What's the variation? Does it ever get to 9.9 or 9.7? It's a negligible "nope" for people weighing themselves :D
We already have a permanently inhabited base outside Earth (ISS) with effectively zero gravity and there might be one on the Moon or Mars in 100 years. We should pass treaties to only use metric in space – a probe has been lost to unit confusion already.
On ISS it's ≈.89g, but agreed
This is dated 2007. Apparently NASA is already using metric:
NASA Finally Goes Metric
I know, it has always used metric but the SW was by Lockheed Martin. Still, we need to convince potential extraterrestrial civilians.
We will convince them by force if necessary. They will adopt the Metric or get barred from entering the space bar