# Can you?

1. Feb 4, 2008

### ThienAn

To all the engineers or the enginnering students out there. How do you give the definition to one meter (1 m)? More: How much do you weight in Newton, slug, and pound-force (lb_f)?

2. Feb 5, 2008

### FredGarvin

The meter is a base unit in the SI system. It helps to define other units. Although, according to Wiki, the standard used to define a meter is 1⁄299,792,458 th of a light-second.

In regards to your question about weight, there are 4.448 Newtons in a Lbf. You can do the math from there to convert any other numbers. Be careful, you are including a unit of mass (the slug) in with units of force. They are not interchangeable.

3. Feb 5, 2008

### Mech_Engineer

All SI units can be decomposed into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit" [Broken] in the SI system.

Like Fred said, the modern fundamental definition of a meter is 1⁄299,792,458 of a light-second. Historically it was defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the poles of the earth passing through Paris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter

A newton is a unit of force, which is in turn decomposed into three fundamental units- Kilograms, Seconds, and Meters. A Newton can be decomposed into $$\frac{kg*m}{s^2}$$, a defintion that utilizes only fundamental SI units. According to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton

A pound-force is a little less obvious because empirical units are not as clean as SI. however, the general definition according to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_force

A slug is a unit of mass that is even harder to visualize, but the basic definition is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(mass)

Last edited by a moderator: May 3, 2017