XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips
From: tkoenig@netcologne.de
Scott Dorsey schrieb:
> Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>On 11/8/25 13:20, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>
>>> I once worked in a facility with a gauge marked lb/cm2 and I never did
>>> figure out how they wound up with that one.
>>
>> Engineers.
>
> Yes, clearly. There's some number that is easiest to calculate with those
> units so that's the unit they use. But what is that number and why is it
> easiest to calculate that way? There is a story here and I bet it turns
> out to be an interesting one.
Ah, pound force... why does lb/lb have the dimension of length/time
squared? Or is it times squared/length? Or one?
Fun story: While I was studying and had just finished technical
mechanics, my father, who was a mechanical engineer, asked me
for some beam theory calculations that he needed for something,
I forget why.
I stared calculating in the units I had been thought - decimal
units based on SI (force Newton, Length m, Density kg/m^3, but
beam cross-section based on mm with the appropriate conversion)
My father looked at the caclulations and became a little agitated.
He told me that, finally, he had understood where to put the
constant of gravity (he had learned with kg force, or maybe kp),
and having seen my calculation, he had immediately understood it
and promptly un-learned the old way he had been tought. The only
problem he saw was that he still knew figures like the strength
of steel in the old measurement system.
At work, I use MathCad a lot, and I rarely hand out a calculation
in Excel whose dimensions weren't checked previously that way.
It also helps a lot with discussions with US colleagues :-)
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