[USMA:25232] Re: weights and masses

[Robert T. Wyatt]

A little high school lesson regarding Han's points:

I'm rather uncomfortable with the obfuscation and lax use of the 
terms "weight" and "mass."

A "pound" is not a unit of mass, it is a unit of weight, which is a 
specific form of force.  In fact, force is mass multiplied by 
acceleration and in the case of a pound it would be 1 slug x 32 ft/s2.

The equivalent metric unit is the Newton, where one Newton equals one 
kilogram accelerated at 9.8 meters per second squared.

Without such basic concepts, nomenclature is pointless.