Pounds Slugs Pound A Ls and Pound Masses

What the Hecks the Difference Between Pound-Force and Pound-Mass? Engineero...
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What the Hecks the Difference Between Pound-Force and Pound-Mass?

by Kevin C. on Mar 26, 2009 My fellow engineers, we are going to once and for all take a serious look at the difference between a pound-mass (lbm) and a pound-force (lbf). In a recent mechanical engineering project, I have had friends that tried to avoid working with pounds because of the ambiguity of it all; instead, they opted to convert to the tried and true units of kilograms to do their calculations, and then convert it back to pounds for the final answer. Sadly, it didnt work as well as was expected.
F = ma So, what is all of this? Well, lets start with what we know. Mass can loosely describe how much stuff something contains. It can be determined by the product of a materials density and its volume. We know this as the kilogram, if we follow SI units. Remember that mass is intrinsic of a specific object, and it does not change if we weigh it on the earth or if we weigh it on the moon. Weight, on the other hand, is a function of the gravity (so its different on the earth and the moon). Though it is commonly know as weight, scientists and engineers know this simply as force. Force equals mass times acceleration, with units of Newton. (When we talk about weight, we let acceleration simply equal gravity, or 9.81 m/s^2!)
W = mg In SI units, 1 Newton is the force needed to accelerate a 1 kilogram mass 1 meter per second over 1 seconds time. When we take a look at English units, though, the equivalent base unit for mass is called the slug. By analogy, we have that 1 pound-force accelerates 1 slug mass 1 foot per second over 1 seconds time. Although slugs are the base units of mass for this system, sometimes the pound-mass is used to represent a mass. You can take the following to be true: 1 slug = 32.17 lbm. (Both are English units of mass! But remember to use slugs in formula that specify a mass. Not pound-masses!)
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What the Hecks the Difference Between Pound-Force and Pound-Mass? Engineero... Page 2 of 6
There we have it. If you remember that slugs are good and pound-masses are bad to play around with, everything should work as youre probably used to with SI units. Use slugs in your equations. Simply as that. Well, kind of. Heres the rub, 1 lbf is the same as 1 lbm if the acceleration is equal to gravity, which is 32.17 ft/s^2. Weird! So you can weigh yourself and the scale reads both pound-force and pound-mass at the same time. I guess that is where the usefulness of the pound-mass comes in, but generally, pound mass shouldnt be used. One more thing To confuse things even more, there is yet another set of mass-force pairs that are used. From the discussion above, we now understand that that 1 pound-force accelerates 1 pound-mass 32.17 feet per second over 1 seconds time. To normalize this, we might try to find a force that can accelerate 1 pound-mass 1 foot per second over 1 seconds time. This particular force is called the poundal, which is equal to 1/32.17 of 1 pound-force. So,1 poundal accelerates 1 pound-mass 1 foot per second over 1 seconds time (not to say this isnt useful, but come on!). Lets try an example. Say we want to calculate the force exerted on a person, named Bob, driving in his Volkswagen, accelerating at 20 ft/s^2. We weigh Bob and find that his weight is 160 pounds -force (note that this is the weight directly off the bathroom scale, also 160 pounds-mass if gravity at the specific location is 32.17 ft/s^2). To convert his earth weight to a universal mass, we divide by the acceleration of gravity: 160 lbf /32.17 ft/s^2 = 4.97358 slugs. Finally, to find the horizontal force exerted on Bob, we use the traditional F = ma equation: (4.97358 slugs) * (20 ft/s^2) = 99.47 lbf. There is a really useful table on Wikipedia. Its copied below, but it is a little confusing to read. I merely distilled it into writing this post.
Mass-Force Unit Systems Questions? Definitely leave a comment, and I hope we can clarify things for you. Categories: In-Depth Articles, What the Heck? Tags: Pound-Force, Pound-Mass, Weight ShareThis 10 Comments
10 Comments to What the Hecks the Difference Between Pound-Force and Pound-Mass?
1. Randy East said, You know, I have to give you credit for the above lesson. In all my books and college classes, I never had this expalined so clearly. I really hope you are involved in teaching since you have a nack for this. It is one thing to know the material and another to teach. Thank you ! Nice Job. Randy East on Jul 29, 2010 at 10:19 AM 2. Matt said, I want to second Randys comment. I missed the first week of my material balance class and was thus quite confused when I first encountered pounds mass/force. This post was helpful in understanding fully. Thanks! on Oct 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM 3. Tom said, You can take the following to be true: 1 slug = 32.17 lbm I believe this is not correct. Looking at other lbm/lbf sites and http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_all.htm, I find 1 lb, lbs = 0.031 080 950 038 slug 1 pound = 0.031 080 950 038 slug 1 pound-force = 0.031 080 950 038 slug 1 slug = 32.174 048 695 pound-force, etc. which makes the following statements incorrect also: Heres the rub, 1 lbf is the same as 1 lbm if the acceleration is equal to gravity, which is 32.17 ft/s^2. Weird! So you can weigh yourself and the scale reads both pound-force and pound-mass at the same time. We weigh Bob and find that his weight is 160 pounds-force (note that this is the weight directly off the bathroom scale, also 160 pounds-mass if gravity at the specific location is 32.17 ft/s^2) My understanding of the relationship between lbm and lbf (substantiated by numerous other web sites such as http://www.ehow.com/way_5163173_pound-force-pound-mass-conversion.html for example show the above 2 statements to be incorrect. But, Im not a mechanical engineer so maybe my understanding is faulty. If Im wrong, then Im obviously totally confused. Would someone please look into this and clarify? on Feb 1, 2011 at 11:13 AM
4. Tom said, Ignore my last comment/question. I studied this some more and this website actually has the correct information, its the ehow.com website thats wrong. Apparently you cannot simply use Newtons 2nd law F=ma as simply lbf=lbm*g as the ehow.com site does. I now understand theres a proportionality constant g sub c or gc which is 32.17 lbm ft/lbf s^2 which must be used. So Newtons 2nd law is written F=ma/gc when using imperial (English) units. Thus F=mg/gc, and g and gc will cancel each other out. If you simply use F=ma as lbf=lbm * g then there is no way that lbf = lbm, but using F=ma/gc allows lbf = lbm when g=32.17. Now I comprehend. And the ehow.com website is the incorrect one. on Feb 2, 2011 at 4:28 PM 5. Nima said, awesomeeeeeeeeee.Thanks! on Oct 16, 2011 at 12:23 AM 6. Taylor said, Thank you for posting this! clears up soooo much confusion My teacher whos a working engineer explained this to me wrong and said anytime something is talking about lbm, I need to multiply it by 32.174 ft/s^2. My answers were not matching up with the textbook, he had me believing the text book was wrong! It would help if my textbook explained the english system in this way Up until this point I was like your friends, converting english units into metric units I now have a much more clear picture of how these work. Thank you Tom for the equation F = mg/gc as this is a useful way to think about it. my question is now, When would you simply multiply lbm by 32.174 ft/s^2 to end up with an accurate lbf? Thanks yall! on Nov 9, 2011 at 2:34 PM 7. Robin Hewitt said, But is the Slug defined at the equator or at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich? Gravity varies by latitude and mass concentration so it makes a difference. on Mar 20, 2012 at 11:53 AM 8. Izhaar said, Hi, This was very useful. I was scratching my head to find the difference between the two. Thanks lot. on Apr 4, 2012 at 10:52 AM 9. Andrew said, This was very helpful but i still dont understand how much lbf equals if there is an object of 180lbm on, lets say, mars? on May 22, 2012 at 10:35 PM 10. [Aerospace] Fundamentals of Flight: Part 2 | Billwaa's Blog said, [...] http://engineerography.com/2009/03/what-the-hecks-the-difference-between-poundforce-and-pound-mass/ [...] on Jun 20, 2012 at 12:51 PM
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What the Hecks the Difference Between Pound-Force and Pound-Mass? Engineero...

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