Like the title. How are we able to convert pounds, which are a unit of force, to kg which is a unit of mass, using a simple scale factor. How are electronic scales able to give us a unit of mass when they measure by using the force enacted on the scale by gravity because all they are doing is using a conversion factor between pounds and kg that shouldn’t exist
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Because the measurement of force on an object of a particular mass due to gravity is effectively identical everywhere on planet Earth. For the general purposes of needing to know weight, fluctuations in the force applied by gravity aren’t even rounding errors – they are too minuscule to matter.
Given that that force is effectively a constant in Earth-gravity, we can convert between mass and force _on Earth_.
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