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Hatzegopteryx
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this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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We were actually talking about Force, though. Pounds is a force, not a mass. I am OP and I meant force because I'm assuming the animal lived on earth. If I wanted to specify mass then I would have used Slugs, the Imperial unit for Mass.
Could you provide any source that states that a pound is a unit of force? Because the American National Standard Institute (here), aswell as Wikipedia and numerous other sources claim its a unit of mass.
The article you linked to does not mention at any point that LBS is a mass, or at all uses the word mass at any point throughout. In fact, it breifly at the end mentions "1 lb=0.45359237 kilogram" as well as "1 Newton=0.224809 pound force" which could indicate a difference between LBF and LBM distinctions.
It's commonly understood that you will weigh a different amount of lbs on the moon than on earth. Because it isn't a mass. It's a force of gravity.
There is also evidence in the form of lbs/in^2 being a common measurement, which would be completely nonsense in the context of mass.
I love educational threads like these.
Even though the original point was "using international standard units makes it clearer for everyone"
Yeah it is pretty fun.
Alright, lets look at the US Customary Units and their definitions. Here is the section called "Mass and Weight". As you can see, everything is defined in metric units of mass. You won't find even pound-force to be part of the Customary units. I couldn't find any source saying that pound (not "pound-force") is a unit of force. However, there was an agreement (I think in 1955) to define the pound in kg.
That basically implies that lb (pound, imperial unit) is a unit of mass and "pound-force" (non-imperial unit, part of the British Engineering Units) is a unit of force. Thus, pound (on its own) is a unit of mass, right?
British Engineering Units are not a part of the US-Imperial System, but since I never specified I suppose it's a good argument.
Did you take into account that earth was heavier millions of years ago? Also, you would have to specify where on earth it weighed that amount.
Anyway, pound is an imperial unit for mass, just like slug. The "pound-force" is not part of the imperial units, jut rather of the "English Engineering Units" that differentiate between pound-mass, pound-force, pound-foot and others.
"Pound" is not a unit of force in ANY system. If you really meant force (I doubt that) you should have used lbf. Anyway, noone cares how many Newtons of force the earth exhibited on that animal, all the metric-using people in this thread are interested in its mass. All scales used to weigh something display kg (or pounds), so units of mass.
The dino would need to be even lighter if the earth was heavier because the force of gravity would be higher, but in general differences in gravity across the earth's surface amounts to a rounding error. For example, you're probably looking at 2000 ish miligal from the top of a tall mountain to sea level difference in gravity, or .02m/s^2 difference.
From mountain to sea level yeah but the difference between Equator and North Pole is almost 1% because Earth is not a perfect sphere.