User talk:Metric1000

Welcome

How much would I weigh on ...

Why did you change all of these sections? To say that one would weigh the same on Pluto as on the Earth is wrong (as you clearly know) and misleading. Please revert. (en user zeimusu wasn't logged in to write this)

Nonsense! It is not wrong, not as the English word "weight" is quite properly and legitimately used in the medical sciences and in sports, the primary reasons we weigh ourselves. Didn't you even read it? What specifically do you think is in error in my explanations?

You know damn well that people around the world (even most hospitals in the United States) weigh themnselves in kilograms. You know that kilograms are units of mass. You know that those kilograms do not change when you go to another planet. Metric1000 15:25, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think that the point of the question about weight is to show that other planets have different gravitional forces from Earth, so we should use units that would vary in different gravitional fields like Newtons. --StarryTG 08:07, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unless you teach the teachers as well as the students, you are going to have lots of damn fool teachers telling them that those newtons are the units they should normally be using to measure their weight. That is not true. We do not use newtons, and we should not use them, for the normal purposes for which we measure our weight, for health and fitness purposes. The pounds (mass) and kilograms which we do use for this are the proper units for this purpose. Metric1000 09:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Weight is not the same as mass. - Omegatron 18:20, 29 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is more often than it is not. But yes, there are also many times when they are not the same. Maybe you just didn't read your own references very well? Of course, for the second, you might also need to follow that link given on the first line of the article you linked to, to mass in this disambiguation entry.

Most relevant to the discussion above, they may even be different from each other "in the doctor's office", but the "weight" there is the same thing as "mass" in a physics laboratory, and "mass" there has a couple of other meanings as well as seen in my link above, different from that quantity called "mass" in a physics lab and called "weight" in a doctor's office. Both are ambiguous words, each with several different meanings. Metric1000 18:12, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I take issue with several of your statements from above: 1)"...weigh themnselves in kilograms. " However, this misses the fact that kilograms are measured with a balance, while pounds are measured on a scale. Scales are most often spring-loaded, and therefore act as a measurement of force. Standing on a scale on the moon will give you a different weight. standing on a balance on the moon would give you the same mass. 2) "Both are ambiguous words" They are only ambiguous if you redefine them every time you forget to use the proper word for the quantity you are trying to describe. 3) Also, whether people measure the quantity of fat that they have (mass), or the downward force that pulls at their fat (weight) does not matter, but the fact that people frequently use both does not make the quantites eqivalent. --Whiteknight _TC^E 19:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

What????!!

First of all, the terms "scale" and "balance" are not two mutually exclusive sets of objects. The term scale is generally a broader term; it includes balances. With an adjective, you might narrow down the group of "scales" under discussion.

Second, the people who weigh themselves in kilograms and the people who weigh themselves in pounds (who can, of course, in some cases be the same people) do not do anything one bit differently when they weigh themselves. Furthermore, the weighing can often be the same scale; it might be two different dials on a bathroom spring scale or on one of those balances with a dial readout (HONEST WEIGHT, NO SPRINGS) you still sometimes see in public places, though they used to be more common. It can also be done on the platform type beam balance in my local doctor's office; the main beam can be flipped over, giving you a different set of detents for the weights to fit into. On many modern electronic scales with built-in microprocessors, the display can often be changed by pushing a button.

Hospital scales are calibrated on site; with people often transferred between hospitals, or to different floors on the same hospital, they want comparable medical records. There is absolutely nothing different in the way that they are calibrated for a readout in pounds from the way they are calibrated for a readout in kilograms, or for a readout in either or both units, as is often the case.

If you wonder how accurate your bathroom scale is, and many people often do, it is quite common to compare its reading to a generally more accurate one from the doctor's office or the gym, where the scale is more likely to be calibrated for accurate readings (readings of mass, never for accurate readings of force). Metric1000 20:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

The original definition of weight, still in common use today, is synonymous with mass. Before the spring scale was invented (era of Isaac Newton), things were always weighed on balances. This weighing is a measure of mass.

In physics-speak, weight is defined as the force caused by an acceleration acting on a mass. When we are talking about weighing ourselves on a spring scale in our bathroom, the acceleration is the one due to gravity (Less the "centrifugal" force and the buoyancy of the atmosphere, of course). The bathroom scale is calibrated to show us mass in pounds or kg, if we use it on the Earth's surface (not underwater, though).

In everyday-speak, weight is the amount of flour in a sack. Before Newton, there was no real way to talk about the force caused by the acceleration due to gravity acting on a mass. There were also no spring scales -- they were invented in the same era. And, before Newton, nobody was testing weight, mass, balances, and spring scales by going to the moon.

Gene Nygaard's Weight page has a nice discussion. Wikipedia's Weight is coming around to a balanced presentation of the older, common usage and the more recent definition dreamed up by physicists.

The confusion/disussion/argument comes, I think, because the word "weight" means two different things in two different contexts. If we took a balance scale around the universe, we would weigh the same any place a balance scale can work (original definition). But, if we use a spring scale, we would see that our weight (physicist's definition; force) varies on different planets.

Too bad the early physicists didn't come up with a new word to use instead of weight! Is this whole debate Newton's fault?

"Weight is different from mass" is true in the context of astronomy or astrophysics, but not in "everyday" life. Of course, the everyday life of a physicist may be a lot different from the everyday life of a grocer.

The challenge, in Wikijunior Solar System, is to present to kids, using words they can understand, the idea that they would feel heavier or lighter on other planets, even though their mass is unchanged. Just saying "if you weighed yourself on a bathroom scale" may be enough. We don't have to explain, in every little section, that if they weighed themselves on their doctor's-office balance, they would weigh the same. --SV Resolution 14:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Scales problem, 81 kg answer

Exactly how is 81Kg correct for Scales_and_Weights_Solution_2? The total mass of all the masses is 80Kg. Please clarify how you could distinguish between 81 Kg and/or any other higher value. Borbrav July 4, 2005 23:27 (UTC)

In assessing your change, I was just going by the numbers I had seen as the bottom line in the linked page, when I had visited it earlier in the day. I did not follow it to see that you had just changed that page as well; and I did not double-check the calculations on that page when I had visited it earlier. I just assumed incorrectly that the reason you had changed it is that you had imagined some symmetry between the links to 40 kg and to 80 kg answers.

So you appear to be right, and I apologize for the reversion. Go ahead, fix that one again. It wasn't my answer in the first place, and the only reason I had the page containing the link on my watchlist was because I had edited it earlier in the day. But just don't use "Kg" or I'll have to come back and fix that, too; the only acceptable symbol for kilograms is "kg". Metric1000 5 July 2005 05:35 (UTC)

Where to put the Proofreading Plan

There are many ways to create a page for discussing the pros and cons of the proofreading plan I proposed.

Please be bold. Create a subpage or move the page to the main name space.

Start the discussion. Improve the proofreading process.

Thanks

--SV Resolution 13:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I raised the problem and deferred to you or others involved in setting this up, because somebody knows better than I do how everything is arranged.

I had looked for it (at least on other proofreading pages), but didn't see the link, at the top of the page I edited for a page, which was set aside for discussion.

I think all the actual plan subpages should be in separate "Module" rather than "Talk" pages, with an overview proofreading page including general discussion of the plan, and specifics about the detailed subpages could then be discussed on the corresponding talk page.

I don't have a good picture of the map of these pages; you are in a better position to do the rearranging, or explain to me exactly what the arrangement is now, and how the pages re linked together. Metric1000 15:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I have added some comments at Talk:Wikijunior Solar System/Proofreading/discussion.

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you before. I have been busy with other things, of course. We are all volunteers here. What I want to say to you is -- be bold. If you think you can make big improvements by moving pages around, I think you should go for it. Study the situation first. Create a sandbox book which exists solely to be reorganized in a variety of ways, and apply what you learn to the work in progress. Finish up by making sure that the newly-reorganized book and all of its supporting pages is still properly interconnected.

Be bold! If you have a good idea of how to cut, organize, and rearrange information to create the 48-page printed wikibook, please make a start of it! Start a brand new book, the "Wikijunior Solar System Booklet". Once we finish proofreading a module of Wikijunior Solar System, you can move it to the Booklet and start removing pieces of it.

I had no standing at wikibooks when I started editing. I demonstrated my good intentions by doing some work on the book as it was. Then I proposed the proofreading plan because I thought some kind of plan would help. When nobody altered or opposed the plan, I plastered it all over the place. Now people treat it like it is obviously the way to work. They treat me like some kind of expert on editing books. I am not.

You could have the same kind of influence on the way things are done. Make a plan. Propose the plan to others. Ask them to improve it. Start using it in a small way. Refine it. Introduce it in a big way. If you succeed in leading people toward a better book, people should be happy with the change. --SV Resolution 14:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikijunior Solar System/About weight and gravity

Hello. Re using "bulky" in the above, I realise it's not as accurate a word as "mass", but I'm trying to avoid using "mass" (and units, etc) so this version of the module might remain as uncontroversial as possible. I'm intrigued that you altered only the final instance.

With say a couple of illustrations and a table, do you think this version of the module is a starter?

Regards, David Kernow 00:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

---