[ExI] Weird new way to do physics

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian

Subject: Re: [ExI] Weird new way to do physics

----- Original Message -----
> From: spike <spike66 at att.net>

> >  Forget degrees.  Think in radians.

>...Thanks for the suggestion, Spike, unfortunately, I am using radians and simply used degrees in my example because I could not find the "pi" key on my keyboard. In any case, you should be one to talk, mister engineer, with your feet, foot-pounds, horse-power, and other English unit nonsense...

Not my feet or pounds.  I think metric.

Engineers must be unit-bilingual.  I am more comfortable in metric units.  The English unit notion of having both a pound mass and a pound force is nonsense.  I had a professor who tried to explain the differences in the equations when using metric and English, how and where to insert G in one system but not the other.  I proposed a way to do it that works really well: in any problem using English units, step one is to convert all pounds mass to slugs.  Then the English and metric equations work the same.  Just think of a slug as a big kg, and a pound as a big Newton.

> ...What is horse-power anyway? 

746 watts.


>...Are you talking clydesdale-power or shetland pony-power? 

Agreed the horse that was used to determine 550 ft-pounds per second was surely a rather flimsy horse.  Or had the flu that day.  Humans can produce a horsepower in short bursts.  Perhaps they meant the amount a horse could do in the long haul.  Seems like they would have made it an even 1000 ft-pounds/sec.


>...And whose foot determined the standard foot? The king of England? The guy with the biggest feet when they were building Stonehenge? Puhleez! ;-P  Stuart LaForge

You got me pal.  I think metric these days.  

My MBrain pitch Friday used an acceleration unit you may not be familiar with.  Recall that I proposed moving an entire star and planetary system using light pressure from an MBrain.  In that sense, the most useful unit of acceleration is light-years per square age, where age is defined as one million years.  So a typical sunlike star with an MBrain can create an acceleration of about .03 ly/(age)^2.  If that is the case, then .5a*t^2 using a=.03, then t is about 15 ages, or 15 million years, to go a distance of the nearest star.

spike