Re: A weighty subject

[Robert Carlson <Raacc@AOL.COM>]

Jim,

Keep it up.  Teach your own definitions to your students.  Perhaps someday
they will pass their data on to NASA as a contractor.  Another crash and
burn.  Definitions are important for communication.  Change them through
appropriate means, but please use the accepted definitions until the change
is accepted.  If you don't know what the accepted definition is, then look it
up.  All sources I look at say the same thing.

Bob Carlson

In a message dated 10/13/99 8:33:56 PM Central Daylight Time,
JMGreen@SISNA.COM writes:

> Ok, I will also try again:  If _I_ say weight is determined by a spring
>  scale, then that is what _I_ mean by "weight".  The fact that other
>  measurements give differing answers is irrelevant.
>
>  Again, I say: "weight" is not a discovery. it is an invention -- and we can
>  invent any definition that is useful to us.  For me it is a bathroom scale
>
>  We would also have the same situation with "mass" except that we have
>  fundamental equations which must be left making sense.
>
>  My point is that there is no fundamental physics which gives much of a damn
>  about "weight" per se so there is not much value in arguing over its
>  definition -- certainly not in an intro class.