----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Ross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] JSBSim changes


[snip]
>
> This doesn't hold for the blasphemous "engineering" units.  How many
> pounds of thrust are required to accelerate an aircraft with a mass of
> 3000 pounds by one foot per second per second?  I dunno.  Trying this
> in SI: How many newtons of thrust are required to accelerate an
> aircraft with a mass of 1500 kg by one m/s^2?  The answer, immediate
> and obvious, is 1500.
>
> To be fair, SI isn't the only system that has this property.  There is
> another metric system that goes by "cgs" (for centimeter/gram/second
> -- the basic units) with the same property.  Those folks talk about
> force in "dynes" and energy in "ergs".

Lets not forget that english units do work well when one stops using
pound-mass and uses slugs for mass (1 slug = 32.2 lb-mass).  Then no
conversion factors are required 1 lb-force = 1 slug * 1 ft/s^2.  This makes
life much easier and many of us don't mind using slugs (expect for maybe
thermo people who just can't seem to get away from lb-mass).  Now we know
immediately that it takes 300 lbs to accelerate 300 slugs by 1 ft per second
per second.

Rob


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