Quote Originally Posted by sathor View Post
You may weigh 100 pounds here, and 1/6 of that on the moon, but those aprox 50 Kg will still be 50 Kg on the moon. and i know that is a bad estimation, I have a 6 month old on my arm.
Quote Originally Posted by thanmuwa View Post
Yes, you are right, lbs are a measure of weight, kgs of mass. We should be comparing lbs and Newtons . A Newton is a measure of weight, approximately 10 * mass in kgs if measured on the Earth's surface, the 10 representing the acceleration due to gravity in m/s. Gosh the metric system is neat!
Sorry, but the physics student has to barge in with technicalities.

Newtons and pounds are measures or force, not weight. When you measure your "weight", you are really measuring to force you are exerting due to gravity against the earth (indirectly, since you are really exerting it on everything between you and the earth too!), which is why you can have pounds of force. However, since most people only ever measure their "weight" on earth anyway, and to measure mass we use "weight" and a balance, then In my opinion, grams is a perfectly acceptable unit of "weight".

9.8 m/s/s, not 10. We have to use 9.8 in class, so I always use it everywhere else too. We usually use the SI units too, which all (mostly) happen to be metric. However, in all my maths classes, we use imperial units. I happen to be decent in both, though I use conversions like 2km = 1 mi, 2.5 cm = 1 in, etc. I'm not good with pounds to kg, but I am working on it.

/know it all
/off topic

I usually pronounce it Kil-AHM-iter out of force of habit, but I do try to say KEE-lo-MEE-ter (british style, since I say all the other metric units like that).

Schwas, they're sure to cause confusion when pronouncing words. I like romantic languages and japanese better since they don't have them. (Except japanese u, which is almost always a schwa and less of a concern anyway.)

again, /off topic