this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
888 points (98.1% liked)

People Twitter

6725 readers
2498 users here now

People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.

RULES:

  1. Mark NSFW content.
  2. No doxxing people.
  3. Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
  4. No bullying or international politcs
  5. Be excellent to each other.
  6. Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (43 children)

Lb-Ft

FFS, just adopt the metric system already. And "lb" is not a force unit. Also don't capitalize unit abbreviations unless named after scientists.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (7 children)

"pound foot" is the most intuitive name for a unit of force imaginable!

How much force? One pound of the foot. Easy!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Red Foreman agrees... "one pound of my foot in your ass"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's one pound per foot you moron!

/s

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not just any old foot, a square one

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Actually pounds are a unit of force

Pounds~newtons

Slugs~ kilograms

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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. /s

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I know slugs are just snails without shells, but they don't need to go faster

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

You wouldn't know her, she goes to a different school.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Mercifully, g=9.8 everywhere on Earth's

Big nope. It depends not only on height, but also on density of stuff under ground.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

On ISS it's 8.722, but it's constantly falling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

The pedantry in this post is so dense you would need a torch to cut through it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

What's the variation? Does it ever get to 9.9 or 9.7? It's a negligible "nope" for people weighing themselves :D

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

On ISS it's ≈.89g, but agreed

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is dated 2007. Apparently NASA is already using metric:

NASA Finally Goes Metric

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I know, it has always used metric but the SW was by Lockheed Martin. Still, we need to convince potential extraterrestrial civilians.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

We will convince them by force if necessary. They will adopt the Metric or get barred from entering the space bar

load more comments (39 replies)