3 ms·
Fair points all round, but if you specify something as 500 kg/m² I know that you mean 500 kg of mass per m² and so know to multiply by 9.81 to get a force and t
by NamTaf 5y ago
Fair points all round, but if you specify something as 500 kg/m² I know that you mean 500 kg of mass per m² and so know to multiply by 9.81 to get a force and thus pressure. I know it can’t already be a force, because that’s a newton.
I’m not suggesting that a “mass per area” convention is bad, rather that pounds is so interchangeably used as a force and as a mass that it’s not immediately obvious to the layman (especially international and not familiar with imperial units) which is being used here, because both could reasonably fit in this particular case when using area as a denominator.
- jaclaz 5y agoWhat I was trying to evidence was not metric vs. imperial, only about "visualizing" the whole stuff. A Pascal by itself is not easy to visualize, a number of kg on a square meter (or for those used to it a number of pounds on a square foot) are IMHO easy to imagine, the 500 kg/m2 we were talking about can be visualized as 5-6 people standing one close to another or as a tank 1 m x 1 m filled with 50 cm of water. As a side note, there is no conversion between kg and kgf, they are essentially the same thing, the 9.81 is already included, and it comes into play when you start using the (BTW proper SI) Newton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force