Jason sure has gotten a lot of feedback on this question. I have these comments. Pound/kilogram is, in principle, acceleration, since the pound is a unit of force, and force divided by mass is acceleration. According to a conversion calculator a colleague gave me, 1 pound (force) is 4.448222 newtons. Since G= (approximately) 9.8 m/sec^2 (meters per second squared), it looks like (pound/kilogram) x 2 = G (approximately, as acceleration). Jason refers to G force. Mass x G = force (weight) as several have pointed out. A body's mass has a force (weight) applied to it when accelerated. I wonder if something is left out of the question - are these some kind of shorthand units? For example, in referring to flight, people talk about G force - since a pilot's mass does not change, acceleration will effectively add to weight force on the body. No matter the mass of the pilot's body, the multiplier increasing the force on it above that on the earth's surface is the acceleration (commonly expressing in "G"s). My favorite example of a shorthand unit is wave number, the number of wavelengths of radiation in 1 centimeter. I believe it is most commonly used in infrared spectroscopy as a unit of energy. "Inverse centimeters" seems far removed from energy, but is equivalent if you understand the shorthand involved and multiply wavenumber by Planck's constant and again by the speed of light. I look forward to the day when "pounds" and "inches" are as commonly used in mechanics as "statcoulombs" and "abamps" now are in electricity and magnetism. Lou Hart -----Original Message----- From: <Rudy Sedlak> [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:42 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Question for the physics "gurus" 1 "G" = 32 feet/second/second don't think you can convert kilos to feet/second/second Rudy Sedlak RD Chemical Company ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------