In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| A foot pound is very precise, and is that amount of energy required to
| shift the mass of one pound the distance of one foot - but how you would
| measure it in the 'back garden lab' I don't know.

Er, you DID learn some elementary physics at school, didn't you?

Moving a mass of a pound the distance of a foot isn't a measure
of energy. At a naive guess, it would mean a foot-pound(force),
a.k.a. a foot-poundall, or a foot-pound(weight). But another,
equally important, question is how it is specified to be measured
(which is where my remark about BHP comes in).

I would have no difficulty measuring it at home, in any of several
different ways, and how to do so would make a nice open elementary
physics examination question. No, I don't approve of the modern
approach of close examination questions or, worse, box ticking.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.