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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gene Nygaard (talk | contribs) at 16:14, 6 December 2004 (clarification of why governments define pounds as units of mass). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

It might be worth mentioning in this article that in France that I know of (and possibly other countries as well that use the metric system, although I only know of the French example), a "pound" is frequently used to describe 500 grams (or half a kilogram). (In France, one refers to a "livre" in this context).

More info:

Pounds that I know of:

• avoirdupois pound = 7000 grains (16 oz of 437.5 grains)
• troy pound = 5760 grains (12 oz of 480 grains)
• Tower pound = 5400 grains (12 oz of 450 grains, I think)
• mercantile pound = 7200 grains (15 oz of 480 grains (same as troy))

The last three are all obsolete (nobody uses troy pounds today, though troy ounces are still in use for gold, etc.)

Also, the section "Troy pound" says that a pennyweight is the weight of a penny in Henry II's time, and a fraction of a troy ounce, but in Henry II's time it would have been a Tower ounce, which is somewhat lighter -- the Tower pound was only replaced with the troy pound for monetary weights by Henry VIII (or maybe it was Henry VII; rather later than Henry II, anyway)

I read the linked article, and I've still got some problems with defining pound as mass. It seems like the governments that define a pound as mass do so just because they don't care to differentiate between the mass of an object and the force that gravity exerts on the mass. Maybe they'll come round once we get moon colonies started :-) Governments can make laws saying that dogs are actually cats, but my physics book says,

In the British system, the unit of force is the pound (or pound-force) and the unit of mass is the slug. The unit of acceleration is one foor per second squared, so

1 pound = 4.448221615260 newtons.

Webster's dictionary also specifies the aviordupois pound as a weight. -- Merphant

That it is called weight does not in any way imply that it is "not mass."

Those government officials not only care about the difference--but they are also a whole lot smarter than you are, and they use the definition appropriate for the circumstances.

Why in the world do you suppose governments bother to define a pound in the first place? When we buy and sell goods by "weight," we certainly should not measure some quantity which varies with the strength of the local gravitational field. We do not do so. We have never done so. That pound defined as 0.45359237 kg is the pound legal for commerce in the United States. Just as it should be--until they finally come to their senses and outlaw it, leaving only kilograms and their multiples and submultiples as the legal units for this purpose.

When that net weight appears on the label of some U.S. product, the pounds and ounces are, of course, every bit as much units of mass as the grams and kilograms which appear right alongside them. No manufacturer measures two different quantities for this purpose, measuring force for the figure in pounds and mass for the figure in kilograms. No manufacturer puts one "weight" on their products for sale in Barrow, Alaska, and a different "weight" on the same product when it is sold in Honolulu, Hawaii. Nor should they do so.

Note that nowhere in the world are newtons legal units for the sale of goods. Nowhere in the world are kilograms force legal units for the sale of goods. Nowhere in the world are pounds force legal units for the sale of goods.

This is the quite proper and legitimate original meaning of the word "weight," which entered Old English over 1000 years ago meaning the quantity measured with a balance. That quantity is mass, not force. It was used as a measure of how much stuff they had, for the purpose of trade. We still use the very same word, with the very same meaning, for the very same purposes today.

Gene Nygaard 16:14, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There's lots of authoritative citations about the pound always being a mass at:

These link to official legislation, history, and authoritative standards bureaus. The pound is a mass, and always has been (well, for over a century, at least.)

http://futureboy.homeip.net/frinkdocs/faq.html#pound

I should note that my comment for the checkin to the article that read "It's not mass... if you think it is, provide references to any standards body that's defined it as a mass since 1893." were totally wrong. This should read, "It's not force/weight... if you think it is, provide references to any standards body that's defined it as anything but a mass since 1893."

If pounds are mass, then why does every (American) science text book says something like "You would weigh 42 pounds on Mars." It may not be what the standards body uses, but it is what people think. I also remember my physics professor saying that pound is a unit of weight. Now he may not be in concordance with the standards body, but it is common usage, which is what wikipedia should present?McKay 20:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

lbm should be mentioned, even if its use is not recommendable. It is used, see e.g. http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=lbm%2Fbbl. -Patrick

Indeed. In that case, we have to mention it; and also say that its use is not recommendable. Likewise, for example, writing "gm" as an abbreviation for gram. -- Tarquin 14:37 Dec 23, 2002 (UTC)

The pound is traditionally a unit of force and weight and is still often used in that sense. The unit was defined before people knew that mass and weight were two differnt things. For anyone who thinks a pound is always a mass, please explain the derived unit of torque, the foot-pound, which is a product of a force and a length. The word pound remains quite ambiguous although, today, it is generally (but, by no means, always) used to mean a mass. Bluelion 19:26 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Pound is for mass, which is also the historic interpretation and definition (see historical weights and measures). Pound (for mass) is abbreviated lb. Pound-force is abbreviated lbf. And there is NO other abbrevitaion for a netric gram but g. Gram is a unit of mass only, always has been. (There used to be a pond unit for gram-force, but this is now totally obsolete). EOD. -- Egil 07:55 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

No, pound is for weight historically, and AFAIK still is. Long ago, people weren't aware that mass and weight were different, of course.

I was unaware that anyone thought of it as a mass measure. I edited the page to fix that, but undid the edit after reading the rest of the page and this discussion...someone should sort it out, though. -- User:Tacitus Prime

You could not be more wrong. Pound (lb) historically is both a force and a mass; it always has been and it still is. Drawbar pull of a railroad locomotive, expressed in pounds, is not a mass, for example. There are many others. I notice that the historical weights and measures article you referenced has a lot of empty spaces - needs to be filled in. Bluelion 12:53 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

This is historically totally wrong: If anything, pound was at the outset a unit of mass AND a monetary unit. The pound for force must have crept in gradually in the 1700s or thereabouts, but in modern usage it has again become important to separate the two. In modern correct usage (to the degree use of the "pound" unit can be considered "modern") pound as a force is pound-force or lbf. The online EB defines "pound" as unit of avoirdupois weight, equal to 16 ounces, 7,000 grains, or 0.4536 kilograms, and of troy and apothecaries' weight, equal to 12 ounces, 5,760 grains, or 0.37 kg. The Roman ancestor of the modern pound, the libra, is the source of the abbreviation lb. In early England several derivations of the libra vied for general acceptance. -- Egil 05:14 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

"If anything, pound was at the outset a unit of mass AND a monetary unit."

Funny, I would have thought it was a weight and a monetary unit. To say it was a mass is revisionist history. If the question is what is 'proper' today, then I have no problem with saying that pound means mass. But saying that, in common usage, that is all it means is a crock. And saying that that is what it has meant historically is also a crock. Before about the middle of the 20th century, I'm quite sure it meant both a force and a mass (yes, I'm that old). And, at that time, I'd bet the prevailing opinion was that it was a force. In recent years there's been quite a campaign by the protectors of all that is good and Holy to get it to mean a mass but, historically, it was both a mass and a force. Unless all the books I have that use the abbreviation lb to represent a force don't exist, and unless the education I got in engine school didn't happen, and unless psi represents a mass per unit area, then the word pound is ambiguous. It means either lbm. or lbf.; we can't be sure unless we know the context. It's a lot like the word billion in that respect. Bluelion 03:19 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

FWIW, I remember physics exam questions from school (early '80s) dealing with converting kilograms to pounds on the moon, etc., i.e., taking pounds to be weight, not mass (that was an American school). Also, my old physics 101 text (Physics, Paul Tipler, 1982) defines a pound as a weight/force. Seems to me, to people who really care about the difference, it's a weight; those who say it's a mass probably don't know the difference :)

---

--Use of Imperial Pound--

The definition of the imperial pound as "obsolete" needs clarification as the unit is still a de facto, if not official, measurment used more frequently than metric in many areas in the United Kingdom. An example is that of measuring the weight of a person in Stones (units of 14ibs) and Pounds and virtually all medical forms completed by patients recognise this practise by allowing the use of either metric or imperial. It is not simply an allowance for older people and feet and inches are used equally for human measurment in everyday situations. Also in boxing arenas the weight of the fighter would never be anounced to the crowd in Kg It would either be in Stones/pounds, or Stones/pounds and Pounds alone where there is likely to be a transatlantic audience for a British boxer.

POV problems

This article had some serious POV problesm, and I think it mostly fixed it. I know it's not perfect so feel free to make stuff look right.

if anyone has some serious griefs with my expressing pounds as weight as the de facto standard, lets discuss itMcKay 08:33, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi McKay -- Could you explain more about what you mean? I'm actually fairly happy with the article as it stands. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that layment consider it a unit of weight; laymen actually don't understand the distinction between mass and weight. --Bcrowell 01:54, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How much do you weigh? It's a completely serious question. I doubt that you would express your answer in newtons or say that your mass is 42 kilos. While some (women) won't want to tell you, or will lie. Any answer you get (in the United States), scientist or not, will be expressed in pounds. That's basically it. The Pound as a unit of weight is the de facto standard.

You also make the claim that the layman doesn't know the difference between mass and weight, and while there are a whole lot of people who don't, I would say that most "laymen" do. They teach this stuff in elementary school science classes. My little sister of 10 knows the difference, but she doesn't think that pounds are a unit of mass. When I was in elementary school science classes, I did a report on Saturn. At that time I could tell you how much you weighed on Saturn. (I forget the multiplier now, it might be in the Saturn article. I don't care to check. Mars is 0.6, Moon is 1/6? ) Such a distinction requires knowledge of the difference, or at the very least, a knowledge of the proper understanding of the weight concept (even if the mass concept is unknown). McKay 03:42, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...I teach college physics, and I wish all my students understood this distinction, coming into my class, from elementary school science. My experience is that almost none of them do. If you ask someone in the U.S. what his weight is, he'll answer in pounds. If you ask someone elsewhere in the world, he'll answer in kilograms. Since the kilogram is undeniably a unit of mass, not weight, I think that demonstrates that the typical person does not understand that there is even a distinction between the two quantities. As a physicist, I think the current state of the article does a fairly good job of discussing how these terms are understood by physicists. What I think would help immensely would be if we could get some contributions from someone who is an engineer in the U.S., and does calculations using the fps system; they are basically the last people in the world who actually calculate things using Newton's laws in the fps system. The NBS article is, to my mind, almost irrelevant, because I know it doesn't represent a clear consensus among physicists, and I suspect it doesn't represent a consensus among U.S. engineers either. A government proclamation can't change the meaning of a word unless it actually matches the way people use the word. I'm still a little unclear about what you meant by POV issues; to me this does not seem to be an issue relating to POV/NPOV, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you. --Bcrowell 19:34, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just as pressure and stress have different meanings in physics class from what they mean in a psychology class, weight has different meanings in different fields. Sure, in physics and engineering weight means "gravitational force", but in commerce and law it means "mass". When something is sold by weight or by the pound, it's mass and the pound-mass that are being used: it's the amount of the substance that's of interest, not how hard it presses against the ground. Likewise when someone measures body weight to assess health or attractiveness, it's how much matter is in the body that is concerned: being overweight would be just as unhealthy in a low-gravity environment. Body weight is measured in pounds-mass. In fact I can't think a "layman" use of pounds that are pounds-force (except if you consider torque in foot pounds and pressure in pounds per square inch as "layman" uses). It would end a lot of ambiguity if everybody quit using the word weight completely, replacing with "gravitational force" or "mass" as appropriate, but that's not likely to happen. Just as a government can't change the meaning of a word, neither can authors of physics textbooks change the meaning of word outside their field. Indefatigable 23:06, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)