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Bravo to User:Greg L for doing some needed heavty-duty article improvement in the past days. I do have one suggestion; I know it is generally accepted to start with a History section, but it feels to me as if this article jumps in too hard and too fast to details most people will skip right over. I suggest a different organization. How about we start first with what is now "Link with weight," rename it to something like "Common use" and put the lead section approximate weight and some other example masses (like gram does) in this new section. How does this sound?
On a side note, do the current "examples" in "link with weight" belong in "SI multiples?" Enuja 19:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I deleted the section for two reasons. First, the concepts are covered in weight and don't need to be replicated here. Second, because it contains speculative statements (referring to people wanting to know how much "heft" there is) combined with inaccurate statements - such as an unqualified claim that weight=force due to gravity. The narrow definition of weight is only force due to gravity is specific to scientific and engineering contexts, while in general use, weight can either mean force due to gravity or mass. See weight for more on that. -- Yath 08:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Greg L ( my talk) 08:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
So…
The length of this section rather interrupts the article's exposition on kilogram - it ought to be either 1. moved to later in article, 2. greatly reduced in size, AND/or 3. briefly discussed with a link to the appropriate article - (which I'd think would be a section in the mass article) -- JimWae 03:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia’s official policy is that the spelling convention used by the first major contributors should be retained. The Kilogram article is written throughout with American spelling (kilogram instead of kilogramme, liter instead of litre). Note the following passage, taken from Wikipedia:Manual of Style:
“ | In June 2005, the Arbitration Committee ruled that when either of two styles is acceptable, it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so (for example, it is acceptable to change from American to British spelling if the article concerns a British topic, and vice versa). Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jguk. | ” |
Note that “liter” is the proper American spelling. Note further that two other instances of liter are elsewhere on the page. Please also take note of another common-sense policy from Wikipedia:Manual of Style:
“ | An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, except in direct quotations, where the original text is generally preserved. | ” |
Accordingly, your insistence at “correcting” this one instance just makes the article non-harmonious. It would be highly inappropriate of you — and against Wikipedia policy — to go through the entire article to change the rest of the article to British spelling.
As regards consistency from article to article within Wikipedia, there is none. Note the Pressure article. It uses British spelling throughout. Further, if you click on a link in the article spelled centimetre (of water), you go to an article titled Centimetre of water wherein the spelling within the article uses the “centimeter” spelling!
Wikipedia’s policy (that the spelling convention used by the first major contributors should be retained) seems a good one. It encourages contributors to begin or substantially expand articles. Further, it reduces frustrations for contributors such as when someone later wades into an article (like the Kelvin article, which uses American spelling throughout) and changes “color” to “colour.”
Please adbide by these policies.
P.S. On a final note, I’m not entirely ‘hung up’ on American conventions. For instance I used the European date convention of “7 April 1795” in the History section. It is such a steaming logical way of doing it and eliminates a comma. And although I am an American engineer, I do all my primary design in SI units and only convert to inches etc. at the last step when generating prints for machine shops or writing an owners manual. (19:09, 13 August 2007)
Greg L ( my talk) 18:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
a quantity "having originally been defined relative to this volume of water" could have been "relatively" defined as half that volume. More information is conveyed by the statement (similar to one long included in this article) - that it is "almost exactly equal to" the mass/weight of 1 L of water.
Wow, I go away on a measly 3 day vacation to (the excellent) Zion National Park, and this article improves by leaps and bouds! How exciting. Honestly, I've only had it watched to keep it from getting any worse; although this article certainly needed serious work a week ago, I wasn't planning on doing any of it. Bravo again to Greg L for doing so much work on this!
Philosophically, I think that this article should do a quick sketch of the mass v. weight issues, and direct readers over to weight. However, the current mass v. weight section has some details and approaches that are better than the treatment at weight. Personally, I think that User:Greg L should put that section in his user space, we should re-organize this article, and Greg L should edit his stuff into weight to make it excellent as well.
Here is a proposal for the organizational scheme:
==Common Use== ===Mass versus weight=== link to main article (weight, yes?) contents of current "the distinction between the two" subsection ===Converting mass to weight === contents of "unit of measure for weight" and current subsections, shortened and put together ==History== (complete with current subsections) ==Stablity of the International Prototype Kilogram== ==Proposed future definitions== (complete with current subsections) ==SI multiples == ==See also== ==References== ==External links==
This would remove the current section "The nature of mass" and the contents of the subsections "Effect of bouyancy" and "Types of scales and what they measure," and I'd also like to work on streamlining much of the new content to be a short and readable as possible. How does this organization sound to everyone?
I'm also going to play around with the lead section; everyone, feel free to revert me or fiddle with it. I tried to do a long talk page post last night with lots of detailed wording proposals, but the computer I was using restarted in the middle of the process, so I'm just going to try doing before talking. I'm very willing to talk after doing. Enuja 23:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
What I'm inferring from what you wrote above is that my recently-added subject matter is too arcane for inclusion in a Wikipedia article on the kilogram. Having worked for decades with other engineers, I believed I knew how their minds worked (don’t ask) and what they would find interesting. To that extent, I thought I could write from that point of view, which would reliably serve as a microcosm for the engineering-type audience. Perhaps though, it's just me. Or perhaps you don't believe engineers as a group, are really representative of the average Wikipedia reader who will come to this article. Given though, that some Wikipedia articles are brimming with arcane formulas suitable only for mathematicians, I think that what is now there is very middle-of-the-road for an article on a technical subject.
I note that we four ( you, me, JimWae, and Yath), who are currently quite active on this article, all have our opinions on the matter and the votes seem 3:1 against me. Of course, I'm a newcomer and have really stirred the pot this time! I would hope that before large swaths of this information are deleted, you all see how well-received the information is by a wider audience. I would suggest that passages that don’t really belong, soon get deleted anyway in “drive-by shootings” by the average reader after they have a WTF?!?–reaction. Greg L ( my talk) 02:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I must repeat that the section on mass & weight, as good as it is, is NOT specific to this article & interrupts the exposition of the main topic. It needs a new home - either mass or weight or an article of its own -- JimWae 01:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Look, eventually this section will get removed - because it just does not really belong here. It would be a shame if it just disappears rather than finds a good home -- JimWae 04:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The second one, “The unit of weight: kilogram-force”, clearly is highly relevant and topical to the subject of the kilogram. It directly addresses the distinction between the common usage of a “kilogram of weight,” and what the unit of measure really is. This article is clearly a highly suitable place for the information.
The third, “Converting mass to force”, is geared specifically to the converting from the kilogram to newtons. It is not a generalized text on the broad concept. Accordingly, it too solidly belongs here in the Kilogram article (and possibly too in the Newton article).
The fourth, “Buoyancy and ‘conventional mass’ ”, deals specifically with mass standards. What would you propose(?) create a new Wikipedia article on mass standards? Even if one did create such a page, this information is obviously still highly relevant and belongs here.
The fifth, “Types of scales and what they measure” is a short paragraph that ‘connects the dots’ about the real distinction of what technically determines the difference between a kilogram and a kilogram-force.
Lastly, the first limitation I cited: the “practical limitation.” Spreading this information all about Wikipedia just exposes it to decay and degradation as it gets edited and and deleted in (now-multiplied) “drive-by shootings.” That’s the downside of Wikipedia.
Your quest to keep articles “short and sweet” is at odds with the very nature of what Wikipedia is about. Wikipedia articles are supposed to grow and expand, otherwise, it would still look as it did in its very beginnings. As long as added information is topical and relevant, the articles improve. Again, at 27 kB for a technical article, this one is still far from bloated. There is no valid reason for anyone to wade through any Wikipedia article and do wholesale deletions on entire sections just because they feel the text could arguably also fit elsewhere. Perhaps the section in question would fit well in other articles too (and should also be copied to these other articles). However, they are clearly topical and relevant to the kilogram, the article isn’t ‘big’ by any means, and wholesale, industrial-strength deletions of entire passages—unless they clearly have little to do with the article—isn’t the Wikipedia way.
If everyone else tried to do what you’re doing, Wikipedia wouldn’t have grown into what it is. It would be a supremely frustrating place to contribute to if others deleted recently added information in the name of keeping already-short articles “short(er) and sweet(er).” Enuja, I think Wikipedia articles would benefit if you expanded them with additional, encyclopedic information, rather than delete other’s work. You’ve got to stop doing this unless the information just plainly doesn’t belong. Greg L ( my talk) 22:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) My first act was to say Bravo! on this page and suggest a different organization. My second act was to propose an organization in more detail while highlighting my agreement with other editors that the mass v. weight section was out of place in this article. Then I waited, as you asked me to, to see what other people thought and what reactions the section would get. However, you did not wait. You kept making the section longer, when the other three editors on this page had all said that it should be shorter and should link to other sections. For my third act, about three days after my second proposal, I edited the section, keeping a lot of the information you had added, and removing the things I had suggested above should be removed. To me, this is the very opposite of simply deleting as my first act. Enuja 02:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
How much information about "Mass versus weight" and the methodology of measuring mass should appear in Kilogram? 00:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Statements by editors previously involved in dispute
Is the information…
Comments from others
1) KEEP. Why was this even brought up for a vote? The section is extremely informative and touched on stuff I wouldn't have known to go looking for. Signed: Rob Fry (I'm not a regular Wikipedia author and I don't know how to sign my name) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.108.28.133 ( talk) 02:03, August 20, 2007 (UTC)
2) FIND A BETTER HOME - this section, as good as it might be or become, is only marginally about the kilogram - and not at all specific to the kilogram. AND, it is not nearly as good as it could be. While it might be technically accurate (nearly without error), it is not succint, and does not stick to one topic at a time. Nor is it anywhere near comprehensive - it mentions that air pressure can slightly affect weight, but never mentions that weight can change drastically or even be (nearly) zero (a fundamental difference). It needs to be improved, moved, & -- after a very brief summary -- linked to from this article & numerous others-- JimWae 07:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
3) The Mass vs Weight section is encyclopedic, but, as it applies equally to all units, should be merged into Mass and weight (or, indeed expanded and placed in Mass versus weight) with a note somewhere in this article to the effect of "The kilogram is a unit of mass. It is important to note that there is a distinction between mass and weight." The content of mass vs weight is relevant to this article, and I agree that a reader would want to read it, but that can be accomplished with a link to another article, rather than placing the material here. Seth Bresnett • ( talk) 12:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Further discussion
I am removing the Request for Comment template because we haven't gotten any new comments in three days, and Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology really doesn't appear to be a very lively place; other RfCs there are also only netting one or two outside editor comments. This RfC only netted two outside editor opinions, one for the inclusion and one against. The argument for inclusion, from an anonymous editor, boils down to "I wouldn't have been able to find it if it wasn't in this article," but I think that is untrue, as any version of this article without extensive discussion of mass v. weight and the issues in massing objects WILL have extensive and obvious links to locations with that information.
So, here's my summary of the current state of opinions. Everyone agrees that mass vs. weight and issues of massing are important.
User:Greg L and 66.108.28.133 (note: this IP has made no edits outside of contributing to this RfC) think that these issues should be in this article because otherwise they'd be hard to find and/or hard to maintain against degredation. User:Enuja, User:Yath, User:JimWae and User:Seth Bresnett think that these issues should be in one common article, to which all mass and weight units can all linked, so that there is one clear, correct, and accessible explanation in Wikipedia.
We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be.
Does everyone agree with that summary? Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article? If so, does everyone agree that the next thing we need to do is decide where all of this information should go? Because some of it is already in weight, I figured that the place for that discussion is Talk:weight but no one has yet responded to my talk page post there. Enuja 18:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated Template:SI multiples (transcluded or subst'ed in this article) for deletion on WP:TFD. Han-Kwang ( t) 16:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
There’s another—and more important—consideration: These tables prevent bloat in articles by avoiding having to explain units of measure in each article that uses them. For instance, the Absolute zero article (as do other articles) might mention a 450 nk record-cold temperature. Note the “nk” link in this just-cited example. It takes the reader to the table where one can see the magnitude of the value in relationship to others. The same thing is done when an article uses “nm” (nanometer) or “ µg” (microgram) in a technical article or . Articles would become bloated if they each had to individually explain every prefixed form of a unit of measure. Yes, one can use scientific notation. But this sort of stuff quickly starts going over the heads of many readers depending on the nature of the article and how soon in the article it begins using scientific notation; that is, after all, one of the purposes of SI prefixes: to simplify. These tables have been in articles for years now and have served a most useful purpose. Just because someone doesn’t see the value in a template is no justification for deleting it. If they don’t see the value of it, don’t use it. And please stop deleting or truncating the tables; it breaks links to it in other articles. Greg L ( my talk) 21:04, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
This section of the article is presently more about force than about either mass or kilogram. Nothing AFTER the 2nd sentence is about the "nature of mass".
1st sentence fine:
Alternative 2nd sentences:
The rest is not about mass - and certainly not about the nature of mass:
-- JimWae 06:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually I do prefer the 1st to the 2nd. Saying "to remain at rest or at constant velocity" makes it seem like there are 2 separate possibilities - whereas saying "remain at constant velocity (which may be zero)" does not treat "at rest" as being somehow a separate state of affairs -- JimWae 06:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
"The unit of weight" is not the kilogram-force, at least in the SI system. A weight is a force, and therefore the SI unit of weight is the newton. As its page says, the kilogram-force is non-SI. Personally, I think it belongs in the article, but not in the lead. Enuja 00:34, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Comone JimWae, if you're going to write something technical, make it technicaly correct. That last thing you wrote…
“ | The kilogram is a unit of mass, a property roughly corresponding to the intuitive idea of "how much matter there is in an object". Mass is also an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity (including a velocity of zero) unless acted upon by an outside force. While objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth, moving a 1,000 kilogram object, even in zero-gravity, requires 100 times more force than moving a 10 kilogram object (assuming both objects were equally accelerated). This can be experienced on Earth by comparing the force needed to push a rowboat in water with the force needed to push (and move) an ocean-liner. While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant). | ” |
…is so chock full of scientific errors it just had to be replaced. You wrote how “objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth.” Of course, there is zero effort to lift something in zero-gravitiy. Then to demonstrate the example of the difference in effort to move two different-mass objects, you used the example of a boat vs. an ocean liner for God’s sake, where there water friction is a gigantic effect that makes it hard for the reader to appreciate what the point is. Finally, the very definition of mass is resistance to acceleration. On what could have been a very simple statement about the nature of mass, you get all sidways on trying to compare and contrast with weight and zero-gravitiy stuff. Good grief, keep it simple. If you’re going to be stuborn about getting your two-cents in, it would be helpfull if you made the article better.
Accordingly, I replaced it with the following (which is scientifically factual, pithy, and succinct:
“ | The kilogram is a unit of mass. Mass is an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at rest or at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. An object with a mass of one kilogram will accelerate at one meter/second² (about one-tenth the acceleration of gravity) when acted upon (pushed by) a force of one newton (symbol: N). Note that the newton, which is the SI unit of force, is defined by the kilogram. Accordingly, if the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram were to change slightly, so too must the newton by a proportional degree so that the acceleration of the kilogram remains at precisely one meter/second². | ” |
Greg L ( my talk) 05:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
It's not about the paragraph now for me, it's that I replaced it with something that was 100% scientifically correct—after explaining to you about the enormous friction issue—and then you'd restore it and defend it! I don't mean to be rude but you’ve really got me curious; have you had any formal training in physics beyond the basics in K–12? Even the little things, like a lack of curly (typographers) quotes and the period outside of the quote mark (the British method that hasn't been used for the rest of the article) aren't proper. I was tempted for about one second to fix these but then that would have memorialized in the history section that I had somehow had a hand in crafting this abomination. This is the last you’ll hear from me on this particular paragraph since this is a total and utter waste of effort. You aren’t listening and have developed a stubborn streak. Either that, or your grasp of basic physics is sufficiently wanting that you are somewhat out of place trying to contribute to a technical article in an encyclopedia. Although this might be construed as a “personal attack,” (notice the punctuation inside the quote), it is, unfortunately, the simple, true facts that go to the heart of your writing this stuff and then defending it after someone pointed out its flaws. In other words, it’s reality, not new-age, self-esteem-building bull crap. If you don’t fix this paragraph, someone else will stumble across it in a matter a days to a few weeks, have a total WTF(!)-reaction, and fix it. I’m perfectly content to sit back and watch that process. Greg L ( my talk) 15:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
JimWae: I’m back in the saddle today. This is regarding the same paragraph again too. Why do I give a crap? Regarding its last sentence in that paragraph…
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant). | ” |
…the sentence is 1) either incomplete or has extraneous information, and 2) even if there is extraneous information, it’s context is incorrect, and 3) there’s more information that is incorrect. Okay…
1) The “strength” of a gravitational field is dependent upon two things: A) the mass of an object, and B) one's distance from the center of mass of the object. If you make a statement about the weight of an object being dependent upon the “strength of a gravitational field,” and then tack on the additional qualifier “and distance from it,” the latter is meaningless; it’s sort of a self-referential, illogical point. The “strength of the field” IS the determining factor in fixing the strength of gravity the mass is exposed to.
2) In the last sentence, you somehow shoehorned a caveat about “velocity being constant” as a requirement for mass being constant. That, of course, is entirely incorrect. And it’s in an encyclopedia, masquerading as fact. Did you not know that mass is constant under acceleration (lack of constant velocity)? As I originally had the paragraph (that you kindly replaced with this “stuff”), mass is actually defined by how quickly it accelerates (has a lack of constant velocity) for a given force acting upon it. Now, one could say that mass is not constant at different velocities relative to an observer, but one needs relativistically high speeds to obtain a sufficiently high γ (gamma) to make this a significant effect. But I doubt that was your point. I don’t know, maybe that is what you were trying to say.
After stripping away the “constant velocity” stuff, the last clause of the above-quoted sentence essentially says ‘the mass of an object is constant as long as pieces of it aren’t missing.’ That’s sort of a ‘Well… Duhh statement don’t you think?. And what does the entire sentence say after it’s been corrected by leaving off the ‘constant velocity’ stuff(?): ‘The weight of mass varies with the strength of gravity.’
I guess the reason I give a crap is this is an encyclopedia that students and other people go to. It really kills me to see incorrect stuff in an encyclopedia. It would be so much easier if you’d let others fix your contributions rather than just reverting their repairs and requiring everyone go here to educate you about physics and technical writing. For how many more days or weeks are you going to force people to deal with you this way in order to work on this article? Greg L ( my talk) 21:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that it is not accelerating near the speed of light). | ” |
“ | Unless relativistic effects apply, mass is an inertial property of matter that is unchanging and is unaffected by gravity whereas the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity. | ” |
“ | Unless relativistic effects apply, mass is a property of matter that is unchanging and is unaffected by gravity whereas the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity. | ” |
JimWae: You originally had
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that it is not accelerating near the speed of light). | ” |
While this isn't incorrect (with respect to “accelerating,”) it is misleading. That’s why I changed it to…
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and doesn’t have a velocity near the speed of light). | ” |
You reverted it by stating the following in the edit comment: “if velocity was constant at 90% c, mass would still be constant in that frame of reference”
OK. What you appear to be asserting is that the mass of matter not only increases as it approaches light-speed, but even though it has this relativisticly inflated mass, it is still a stable—though inflated—value. Why in the world would you write something so obscure in this article? It's already obscure enough in that it is an exception for relativistic effects but now you're trying to talk about variable relativistic effects!.
Note that anytime an object has no relativistic velocity with respect to an observer, it has normal “rest” mass. If the object is traveling with respect to an observer at a high, relativistic speed, its mass is substantially increased. To use your example of 90% the speed of light, the object would have a γ of 2.29415 and, accordingly, would have a mass (m) of over twice its rest mass (m0). This is more than an abstract, theoretical situation: the mass of muons entering a laboratory from high in the atmosphere display spuriously long lifetimes—and relativisticly high mass—due to their velocity. This is a reasonably important point to make, that high velocities changes the mass of matter. It logically follows that accelerating at near the speed of light is a variable amount of this mass dilation. Jumping over the first effect (traveling near the speed of light changes mass) and going directly to the next effect (accelerating near the speed of light has a variable change of mass) is just confusing. The whole point of technical writing is to educate, not confuse the typical reader with way-abstract points.
In hopes of achieving yet another compromise with you, I've changed it to “traveling near the speed of light.” It avoids nailing the issue down to just “velocity,” while dodging the potentially misleading added specificity of “accelerating.” Please also consider allowing the change from “object” to “matter.” This permits the deletion of “gaining atomic material” and similar caveats. As you can see, it conveys the same concept, just in a much more compact way.
As regards your wondering about this ‘newton thing’ (OMG!), that's the very definition of the kilogram. Along with the units for acceleration, it adds extra specificity to mass, acceleration, and force. It solidly deserves to be in this Wikipedia article.
Greg L ( my talk) 04:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
To quote myself from this very page
“ | I am removing the Request for Comment template because we haven't gotten any new comments in three days, and
Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology really doesn't appear to be a very lively place; other RfCs there are also only netting one or two outside editor comments. This RfC only netted two outside editor opinions, one for the inclusion and one against. The argument for inclusion, from an anonymous editor, boils down to "I wouldn't have been able to find it if it wasn't in this article," but I think that is untrue, as any version of this article without extensive discussion of mass v. weight and the issues in massing objects WILL have extensive and obvious links to locations with that information.
So, here's my summary of the current state of opinions. Everyone agrees that mass vs. weight and issues of massing are important. User:Greg L and 66.108.28.133 (note: this IP has made no edits outside of contributing to this RfC) think that these issues should be in this article because otherwise they'd be hard to find and/or hard to maintain against degredation. User:Enuja, User:Yath, User:JimWae and User:Seth Bresnett think that these issues should be in one common article, to which all mass and weight units can all linked, so that there is one clear, correct, and accessible explanation in Wikipedia. We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be. Does everyone agree with that summary? Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article? If so, does everyone agree that the next thing we need to do is decide where all of this information should go? Because some of it is already in weight, I figured that the place for that discussion is Talk:weight but no one has yet responded to my talk page post there. Enuja 18:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC) |
” |
Unfortunately, no-one replied to that.
As far as I can see, there is as close to a consensus as possible that issues about mass versus weight (and, I'd assume, about relativity!) should be in other articles, so that the hard work is accessible to many readers. Instead, Greg L and JimWae continue to edit here the sections mentioned in the RfC. JimWae, do you still think that these sections should be in weight? Personally, I was trying to avoid stepping on toes by building a consensus here, but I feel that I, and the consensus, are being ignored. I'm trying to avoid editing here the sections that I think should go elsewhere; JimWae, if you still think that they should go elsewhere, we should move those sections instead of working on them here. Enuja (talk) 16:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Greg L, my height is 5'2" or 1.57 meters. I'm short. A username I used on online talk boards was "elfy" and came from that. I liked how "elfy" sounds, but not the diminutive "y", so I turned a description of me (A June, as June is my first name) backwards for my username. Then, one of the first major editing things I did was trim some bloated parts of Whaling (which is still a fairly unreadable article), so I figured it would be cute, consistent with my personality, and consistent with the fact that I didn't have much on my user page, to say "Shorter is Better!" Why do I have to explain this on the kilogram talk page?
Yes, I recently updated my user page (which also had five userboxes and the wikipedia signpost template) as a result of goings on here, because I realized that you misinterpreted what I thought was a funny, succinct statement. I did not want you to continue to misinterpret that, and I did not want other people in the future to misinterpret it, so I changed it. How is that a problem?
Please stop attacking me (and JimWae, and anyone else) personally. How did all everyone who contributes regularly to this article become "my gang?" Greg L, you went to my talk page, twice, to ask to me wiegh in on this issue. Just because I ended up disagreeing with you does not mean that I'm part of a gang opposing you. You did an edit which several editors, including me, disagreed with. I tried to convince you to approach this article differently. You were not convinced. I put out a request for comments. Then I tried to summarize the request for comments. I am not acting like an administrator in any way; I am trying to follow general wikipedia guidelines for writing collaboratively and buiding consensus. Nothing I am trying to do is in any way reserved for the use of administrators.
Honestly, Greg L, you are the reason kilogram is currently in relatively GOOD shape. It IMPROVED recently. I'm not trying to tell you this to pat you on the back and make you feel better. You have made lots and lots of good contributions to this article. But that doesn't mean what you write is the best this article can be. You need to let other editors edit what you add, and sometimes even remove what you add, without attacking them. Please re-read WP:OWN, please keep contributing to this article, and please stop attacking people whenever they disagree with you. Enuja (talk) 18:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
If entire sections don't really belong in any article, or are poorly written, they get edited and/or deleted soon enough by others. For instance, check out Specific heat capacity. I did to that article, what I essentially did here: I completely re-wrote it. I fixed gobs of errors along the way. There was a serious misstatement of fact in that poor article that persisted for 229 days just because the text got so convoluted, no one wanted to wade through its to really understand what the hell it was trying to say. There was no vitriolic hyperbole over my re-write, as if I was playing in someone's sandbox and was unwelcome. Don’t bother poo-pooing this last statement; that's what JimWae’s actions and attitude comes across to me as. In fact, with the Specific heat capacity article, another editor later suggested we merge Heat capacity into Specific heat capacity. So I then transplanted the necessary text and two other editors collaborated to delete the Heat capacity article (which no longer exists). Now this is the important part: Note the article's history. Do you see how we regular contributors (those with user pages) are sitting back letting the rest of the world (regular folk with only I.P. addresses) have at it. We’re just watching for now, ready to correct obvious goofs or piss-poor wording.
Have you considered allowing this process—letting others (the rest of the world) have a crack at it—to take place on the Kilogram article, instead of taking it upon yourself to decide what you’re willing to permit stay and what must go?
Greg L (
my talk)
22:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
P.S.: I also have little patience for your tactic of stating a fact: “We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be” …and then trying to create the impression that a consensus has been reached by ‘suggesting as much’ in the form of a question: “Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article?” …and then proposing specific action to begin deleting the section founded upon your own, faulty, rhetorical question. You even solicited JimWae to begin doing the dirty work and heavy lifting for you. I’d tell you what I really think about that stunt, and trying to pass yourself off as an unbiased mediator seeking only Truth, Justice, and the Wikipedian Way™® SM ©, but you’d likely claim it was a “personal attack.”
Greg L (
my talk)
22:37, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The children's riddle is more like "Which weighs more, a ton of lead or a ton of feathers?" This (ton of aluminum) seems to be an example of inventing "common mistakes" just to make a point.
compare
Some rationale can be made for a section distinguishing mass from weight in the mass article, the weight article, and perhaps even in the kilogram article - but little if any case has been made for distinguishing 2 (or 3) types of weight (weight in vacuum, vs weight in air, vs weight in any fluid) in the kilogram article. Such distinctions belong in the weight article. Our new contributor continues to make massive edits (some good, several incorrect or misleading) to the article & ignores (per:"I'm not interested in what a (very) small group of regular editors feel") all pleas for sober second thought here. He justifies his editing of others' contributions with arguments he rejects when others try to apply those arguments to his edits -- JimWae 18:00, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic velocity with respect to an observer). Accordingly, astronauts in microgravity exert no effort to lift loose objects inside their spacecraft since those objects are hovering. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, a 100-kilogram object accelerates at only one-hundredth the rate of a 1-kilogram object when an astronaut pushes on them with equal force.
1. Effort is required in both cases
2. There is no connection between sentences.
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object above the cabin floor since they naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object to the same velocity as a 1-kilogram object.
The kilogram is a unit of mass, which corresponds to the intuitive idea of “how much matter there is in an object.” Mass is an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. An object with a mass of one kilogram will accelerate at one meter/second² (about one-tenth the acceleration of Earth’s gravity) when acted upon (pushed by) a force of one newton (symbol: N).
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic velocity with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no work is required to lift loose objects inside their spacecraft since those objects are hovering. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must perform one hundred times more work to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as a 1-kilogram object.
This entire section needs to go to end of article -- JimWae 18:14, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
The kilogram is a unit of mass, a property roughly corresponding to the intuitive idea of "how much matter there is in an object". Mass is also an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity (including a velocity of zero) unless acted upon by an outside force. While objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth, moving a 1,000 kilogram object, even in zero-gravity, requires 100 times more force than moving a 10 kilogram object (assuming both objects were equally accelerated). This can be experienced on Earth by comparing the force needed to push a rowboat in water with the force needed to push (and move) an ocean-liner. While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant).
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Bravo to User:Greg L for doing some needed heavty-duty article improvement in the past days. I do have one suggestion; I know it is generally accepted to start with a History section, but it feels to me as if this article jumps in too hard and too fast to details most people will skip right over. I suggest a different organization. How about we start first with what is now "Link with weight," rename it to something like "Common use" and put the lead section approximate weight and some other example masses (like gram does) in this new section. How does this sound?
On a side note, do the current "examples" in "link with weight" belong in "SI multiples?" Enuja 19:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I deleted the section for two reasons. First, the concepts are covered in weight and don't need to be replicated here. Second, because it contains speculative statements (referring to people wanting to know how much "heft" there is) combined with inaccurate statements - such as an unqualified claim that weight=force due to gravity. The narrow definition of weight is only force due to gravity is specific to scientific and engineering contexts, while in general use, weight can either mean force due to gravity or mass. See weight for more on that. -- Yath 08:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Greg L ( my talk) 08:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
So…
The length of this section rather interrupts the article's exposition on kilogram - it ought to be either 1. moved to later in article, 2. greatly reduced in size, AND/or 3. briefly discussed with a link to the appropriate article - (which I'd think would be a section in the mass article) -- JimWae 03:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia’s official policy is that the spelling convention used by the first major contributors should be retained. The Kilogram article is written throughout with American spelling (kilogram instead of kilogramme, liter instead of litre). Note the following passage, taken from Wikipedia:Manual of Style:
“ | In June 2005, the Arbitration Committee ruled that when either of two styles is acceptable, it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so (for example, it is acceptable to change from American to British spelling if the article concerns a British topic, and vice versa). Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jguk. | ” |
Note that “liter” is the proper American spelling. Note further that two other instances of liter are elsewhere on the page. Please also take note of another common-sense policy from Wikipedia:Manual of Style:
“ | An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, except in direct quotations, where the original text is generally preserved. | ” |
Accordingly, your insistence at “correcting” this one instance just makes the article non-harmonious. It would be highly inappropriate of you — and against Wikipedia policy — to go through the entire article to change the rest of the article to British spelling.
As regards consistency from article to article within Wikipedia, there is none. Note the Pressure article. It uses British spelling throughout. Further, if you click on a link in the article spelled centimetre (of water), you go to an article titled Centimetre of water wherein the spelling within the article uses the “centimeter” spelling!
Wikipedia’s policy (that the spelling convention used by the first major contributors should be retained) seems a good one. It encourages contributors to begin or substantially expand articles. Further, it reduces frustrations for contributors such as when someone later wades into an article (like the Kelvin article, which uses American spelling throughout) and changes “color” to “colour.”
Please adbide by these policies.
P.S. On a final note, I’m not entirely ‘hung up’ on American conventions. For instance I used the European date convention of “7 April 1795” in the History section. It is such a steaming logical way of doing it and eliminates a comma. And although I am an American engineer, I do all my primary design in SI units and only convert to inches etc. at the last step when generating prints for machine shops or writing an owners manual. (19:09, 13 August 2007)
Greg L ( my talk) 18:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
a quantity "having originally been defined relative to this volume of water" could have been "relatively" defined as half that volume. More information is conveyed by the statement (similar to one long included in this article) - that it is "almost exactly equal to" the mass/weight of 1 L of water.
Wow, I go away on a measly 3 day vacation to (the excellent) Zion National Park, and this article improves by leaps and bouds! How exciting. Honestly, I've only had it watched to keep it from getting any worse; although this article certainly needed serious work a week ago, I wasn't planning on doing any of it. Bravo again to Greg L for doing so much work on this!
Philosophically, I think that this article should do a quick sketch of the mass v. weight issues, and direct readers over to weight. However, the current mass v. weight section has some details and approaches that are better than the treatment at weight. Personally, I think that User:Greg L should put that section in his user space, we should re-organize this article, and Greg L should edit his stuff into weight to make it excellent as well.
Here is a proposal for the organizational scheme:
==Common Use== ===Mass versus weight=== link to main article (weight, yes?) contents of current "the distinction between the two" subsection ===Converting mass to weight === contents of "unit of measure for weight" and current subsections, shortened and put together ==History== (complete with current subsections) ==Stablity of the International Prototype Kilogram== ==Proposed future definitions== (complete with current subsections) ==SI multiples == ==See also== ==References== ==External links==
This would remove the current section "The nature of mass" and the contents of the subsections "Effect of bouyancy" and "Types of scales and what they measure," and I'd also like to work on streamlining much of the new content to be a short and readable as possible. How does this organization sound to everyone?
I'm also going to play around with the lead section; everyone, feel free to revert me or fiddle with it. I tried to do a long talk page post last night with lots of detailed wording proposals, but the computer I was using restarted in the middle of the process, so I'm just going to try doing before talking. I'm very willing to talk after doing. Enuja 23:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
What I'm inferring from what you wrote above is that my recently-added subject matter is too arcane for inclusion in a Wikipedia article on the kilogram. Having worked for decades with other engineers, I believed I knew how their minds worked (don’t ask) and what they would find interesting. To that extent, I thought I could write from that point of view, which would reliably serve as a microcosm for the engineering-type audience. Perhaps though, it's just me. Or perhaps you don't believe engineers as a group, are really representative of the average Wikipedia reader who will come to this article. Given though, that some Wikipedia articles are brimming with arcane formulas suitable only for mathematicians, I think that what is now there is very middle-of-the-road for an article on a technical subject.
I note that we four ( you, me, JimWae, and Yath), who are currently quite active on this article, all have our opinions on the matter and the votes seem 3:1 against me. Of course, I'm a newcomer and have really stirred the pot this time! I would hope that before large swaths of this information are deleted, you all see how well-received the information is by a wider audience. I would suggest that passages that don’t really belong, soon get deleted anyway in “drive-by shootings” by the average reader after they have a WTF?!?–reaction. Greg L ( my talk) 02:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I must repeat that the section on mass & weight, as good as it is, is NOT specific to this article & interrupts the exposition of the main topic. It needs a new home - either mass or weight or an article of its own -- JimWae 01:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Look, eventually this section will get removed - because it just does not really belong here. It would be a shame if it just disappears rather than finds a good home -- JimWae 04:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The second one, “The unit of weight: kilogram-force”, clearly is highly relevant and topical to the subject of the kilogram. It directly addresses the distinction between the common usage of a “kilogram of weight,” and what the unit of measure really is. This article is clearly a highly suitable place for the information.
The third, “Converting mass to force”, is geared specifically to the converting from the kilogram to newtons. It is not a generalized text on the broad concept. Accordingly, it too solidly belongs here in the Kilogram article (and possibly too in the Newton article).
The fourth, “Buoyancy and ‘conventional mass’ ”, deals specifically with mass standards. What would you propose(?) create a new Wikipedia article on mass standards? Even if one did create such a page, this information is obviously still highly relevant and belongs here.
The fifth, “Types of scales and what they measure” is a short paragraph that ‘connects the dots’ about the real distinction of what technically determines the difference between a kilogram and a kilogram-force.
Lastly, the first limitation I cited: the “practical limitation.” Spreading this information all about Wikipedia just exposes it to decay and degradation as it gets edited and and deleted in (now-multiplied) “drive-by shootings.” That’s the downside of Wikipedia.
Your quest to keep articles “short and sweet” is at odds with the very nature of what Wikipedia is about. Wikipedia articles are supposed to grow and expand, otherwise, it would still look as it did in its very beginnings. As long as added information is topical and relevant, the articles improve. Again, at 27 kB for a technical article, this one is still far from bloated. There is no valid reason for anyone to wade through any Wikipedia article and do wholesale deletions on entire sections just because they feel the text could arguably also fit elsewhere. Perhaps the section in question would fit well in other articles too (and should also be copied to these other articles). However, they are clearly topical and relevant to the kilogram, the article isn’t ‘big’ by any means, and wholesale, industrial-strength deletions of entire passages—unless they clearly have little to do with the article—isn’t the Wikipedia way.
If everyone else tried to do what you’re doing, Wikipedia wouldn’t have grown into what it is. It would be a supremely frustrating place to contribute to if others deleted recently added information in the name of keeping already-short articles “short(er) and sweet(er).” Enuja, I think Wikipedia articles would benefit if you expanded them with additional, encyclopedic information, rather than delete other’s work. You’ve got to stop doing this unless the information just plainly doesn’t belong. Greg L ( my talk) 22:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) My first act was to say Bravo! on this page and suggest a different organization. My second act was to propose an organization in more detail while highlighting my agreement with other editors that the mass v. weight section was out of place in this article. Then I waited, as you asked me to, to see what other people thought and what reactions the section would get. However, you did not wait. You kept making the section longer, when the other three editors on this page had all said that it should be shorter and should link to other sections. For my third act, about three days after my second proposal, I edited the section, keeping a lot of the information you had added, and removing the things I had suggested above should be removed. To me, this is the very opposite of simply deleting as my first act. Enuja 02:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
How much information about "Mass versus weight" and the methodology of measuring mass should appear in Kilogram? 00:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Statements by editors previously involved in dispute
Is the information…
Comments from others
1) KEEP. Why was this even brought up for a vote? The section is extremely informative and touched on stuff I wouldn't have known to go looking for. Signed: Rob Fry (I'm not a regular Wikipedia author and I don't know how to sign my name) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.108.28.133 ( talk) 02:03, August 20, 2007 (UTC)
2) FIND A BETTER HOME - this section, as good as it might be or become, is only marginally about the kilogram - and not at all specific to the kilogram. AND, it is not nearly as good as it could be. While it might be technically accurate (nearly without error), it is not succint, and does not stick to one topic at a time. Nor is it anywhere near comprehensive - it mentions that air pressure can slightly affect weight, but never mentions that weight can change drastically or even be (nearly) zero (a fundamental difference). It needs to be improved, moved, & -- after a very brief summary -- linked to from this article & numerous others-- JimWae 07:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
3) The Mass vs Weight section is encyclopedic, but, as it applies equally to all units, should be merged into Mass and weight (or, indeed expanded and placed in Mass versus weight) with a note somewhere in this article to the effect of "The kilogram is a unit of mass. It is important to note that there is a distinction between mass and weight." The content of mass vs weight is relevant to this article, and I agree that a reader would want to read it, but that can be accomplished with a link to another article, rather than placing the material here. Seth Bresnett • ( talk) 12:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Further discussion
I am removing the Request for Comment template because we haven't gotten any new comments in three days, and Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology really doesn't appear to be a very lively place; other RfCs there are also only netting one or two outside editor comments. This RfC only netted two outside editor opinions, one for the inclusion and one against. The argument for inclusion, from an anonymous editor, boils down to "I wouldn't have been able to find it if it wasn't in this article," but I think that is untrue, as any version of this article without extensive discussion of mass v. weight and the issues in massing objects WILL have extensive and obvious links to locations with that information.
So, here's my summary of the current state of opinions. Everyone agrees that mass vs. weight and issues of massing are important.
User:Greg L and 66.108.28.133 (note: this IP has made no edits outside of contributing to this RfC) think that these issues should be in this article because otherwise they'd be hard to find and/or hard to maintain against degredation. User:Enuja, User:Yath, User:JimWae and User:Seth Bresnett think that these issues should be in one common article, to which all mass and weight units can all linked, so that there is one clear, correct, and accessible explanation in Wikipedia.
We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be.
Does everyone agree with that summary? Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article? If so, does everyone agree that the next thing we need to do is decide where all of this information should go? Because some of it is already in weight, I figured that the place for that discussion is Talk:weight but no one has yet responded to my talk page post there. Enuja 18:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated Template:SI multiples (transcluded or subst'ed in this article) for deletion on WP:TFD. Han-Kwang ( t) 16:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
There’s another—and more important—consideration: These tables prevent bloat in articles by avoiding having to explain units of measure in each article that uses them. For instance, the Absolute zero article (as do other articles) might mention a 450 nk record-cold temperature. Note the “nk” link in this just-cited example. It takes the reader to the table where one can see the magnitude of the value in relationship to others. The same thing is done when an article uses “nm” (nanometer) or “ µg” (microgram) in a technical article or . Articles would become bloated if they each had to individually explain every prefixed form of a unit of measure. Yes, one can use scientific notation. But this sort of stuff quickly starts going over the heads of many readers depending on the nature of the article and how soon in the article it begins using scientific notation; that is, after all, one of the purposes of SI prefixes: to simplify. These tables have been in articles for years now and have served a most useful purpose. Just because someone doesn’t see the value in a template is no justification for deleting it. If they don’t see the value of it, don’t use it. And please stop deleting or truncating the tables; it breaks links to it in other articles. Greg L ( my talk) 21:04, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
This section of the article is presently more about force than about either mass or kilogram. Nothing AFTER the 2nd sentence is about the "nature of mass".
1st sentence fine:
Alternative 2nd sentences:
The rest is not about mass - and certainly not about the nature of mass:
-- JimWae 06:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually I do prefer the 1st to the 2nd. Saying "to remain at rest or at constant velocity" makes it seem like there are 2 separate possibilities - whereas saying "remain at constant velocity (which may be zero)" does not treat "at rest" as being somehow a separate state of affairs -- JimWae 06:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
"The unit of weight" is not the kilogram-force, at least in the SI system. A weight is a force, and therefore the SI unit of weight is the newton. As its page says, the kilogram-force is non-SI. Personally, I think it belongs in the article, but not in the lead. Enuja 00:34, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Comone JimWae, if you're going to write something technical, make it technicaly correct. That last thing you wrote…
“ | The kilogram is a unit of mass, a property roughly corresponding to the intuitive idea of "how much matter there is in an object". Mass is also an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity (including a velocity of zero) unless acted upon by an outside force. While objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth, moving a 1,000 kilogram object, even in zero-gravity, requires 100 times more force than moving a 10 kilogram object (assuming both objects were equally accelerated). This can be experienced on Earth by comparing the force needed to push a rowboat in water with the force needed to push (and move) an ocean-liner. While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant). | ” |
…is so chock full of scientific errors it just had to be replaced. You wrote how “objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth.” Of course, there is zero effort to lift something in zero-gravitiy. Then to demonstrate the example of the difference in effort to move two different-mass objects, you used the example of a boat vs. an ocean liner for God’s sake, where there water friction is a gigantic effect that makes it hard for the reader to appreciate what the point is. Finally, the very definition of mass is resistance to acceleration. On what could have been a very simple statement about the nature of mass, you get all sidways on trying to compare and contrast with weight and zero-gravitiy stuff. Good grief, keep it simple. If you’re going to be stuborn about getting your two-cents in, it would be helpfull if you made the article better.
Accordingly, I replaced it with the following (which is scientifically factual, pithy, and succinct:
“ | The kilogram is a unit of mass. Mass is an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at rest or at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. An object with a mass of one kilogram will accelerate at one meter/second² (about one-tenth the acceleration of gravity) when acted upon (pushed by) a force of one newton (symbol: N). Note that the newton, which is the SI unit of force, is defined by the kilogram. Accordingly, if the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram were to change slightly, so too must the newton by a proportional degree so that the acceleration of the kilogram remains at precisely one meter/second². | ” |
Greg L ( my talk) 05:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
It's not about the paragraph now for me, it's that I replaced it with something that was 100% scientifically correct—after explaining to you about the enormous friction issue—and then you'd restore it and defend it! I don't mean to be rude but you’ve really got me curious; have you had any formal training in physics beyond the basics in K–12? Even the little things, like a lack of curly (typographers) quotes and the period outside of the quote mark (the British method that hasn't been used for the rest of the article) aren't proper. I was tempted for about one second to fix these but then that would have memorialized in the history section that I had somehow had a hand in crafting this abomination. This is the last you’ll hear from me on this particular paragraph since this is a total and utter waste of effort. You aren’t listening and have developed a stubborn streak. Either that, or your grasp of basic physics is sufficiently wanting that you are somewhat out of place trying to contribute to a technical article in an encyclopedia. Although this might be construed as a “personal attack,” (notice the punctuation inside the quote), it is, unfortunately, the simple, true facts that go to the heart of your writing this stuff and then defending it after someone pointed out its flaws. In other words, it’s reality, not new-age, self-esteem-building bull crap. If you don’t fix this paragraph, someone else will stumble across it in a matter a days to a few weeks, have a total WTF(!)-reaction, and fix it. I’m perfectly content to sit back and watch that process. Greg L ( my talk) 15:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
JimWae: I’m back in the saddle today. This is regarding the same paragraph again too. Why do I give a crap? Regarding its last sentence in that paragraph…
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant). | ” |
…the sentence is 1) either incomplete or has extraneous information, and 2) even if there is extraneous information, it’s context is incorrect, and 3) there’s more information that is incorrect. Okay…
1) The “strength” of a gravitational field is dependent upon two things: A) the mass of an object, and B) one's distance from the center of mass of the object. If you make a statement about the weight of an object being dependent upon the “strength of a gravitational field,” and then tack on the additional qualifier “and distance from it,” the latter is meaningless; it’s sort of a self-referential, illogical point. The “strength of the field” IS the determining factor in fixing the strength of gravity the mass is exposed to.
2) In the last sentence, you somehow shoehorned a caveat about “velocity being constant” as a requirement for mass being constant. That, of course, is entirely incorrect. And it’s in an encyclopedia, masquerading as fact. Did you not know that mass is constant under acceleration (lack of constant velocity)? As I originally had the paragraph (that you kindly replaced with this “stuff”), mass is actually defined by how quickly it accelerates (has a lack of constant velocity) for a given force acting upon it. Now, one could say that mass is not constant at different velocities relative to an observer, but one needs relativistically high speeds to obtain a sufficiently high γ (gamma) to make this a significant effect. But I doubt that was your point. I don’t know, maybe that is what you were trying to say.
After stripping away the “constant velocity” stuff, the last clause of the above-quoted sentence essentially says ‘the mass of an object is constant as long as pieces of it aren’t missing.’ That’s sort of a ‘Well… Duhh statement don’t you think?. And what does the entire sentence say after it’s been corrected by leaving off the ‘constant velocity’ stuff(?): ‘The weight of mass varies with the strength of gravity.’
I guess the reason I give a crap is this is an encyclopedia that students and other people go to. It really kills me to see incorrect stuff in an encyclopedia. It would be so much easier if you’d let others fix your contributions rather than just reverting their repairs and requiring everyone go here to educate you about physics and technical writing. For how many more days or weeks are you going to force people to deal with you this way in order to work on this article? Greg L ( my talk) 21:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that it is not accelerating near the speed of light). | ” |
“ | Unless relativistic effects apply, mass is an inertial property of matter that is unchanging and is unaffected by gravity whereas the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity. | ” |
“ | Unless relativistic effects apply, mass is a property of matter that is unchanging and is unaffected by gravity whereas the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity. | ” |
JimWae: You originally had
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that it is not accelerating near the speed of light). | ” |
While this isn't incorrect (with respect to “accelerating,”) it is misleading. That’s why I changed it to…
“ | While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and doesn’t have a velocity near the speed of light). | ” |
You reverted it by stating the following in the edit comment: “if velocity was constant at 90% c, mass would still be constant in that frame of reference”
OK. What you appear to be asserting is that the mass of matter not only increases as it approaches light-speed, but even though it has this relativisticly inflated mass, it is still a stable—though inflated—value. Why in the world would you write something so obscure in this article? It's already obscure enough in that it is an exception for relativistic effects but now you're trying to talk about variable relativistic effects!.
Note that anytime an object has no relativistic velocity with respect to an observer, it has normal “rest” mass. If the object is traveling with respect to an observer at a high, relativistic speed, its mass is substantially increased. To use your example of 90% the speed of light, the object would have a γ of 2.29415 and, accordingly, would have a mass (m) of over twice its rest mass (m0). This is more than an abstract, theoretical situation: the mass of muons entering a laboratory from high in the atmosphere display spuriously long lifetimes—and relativisticly high mass—due to their velocity. This is a reasonably important point to make, that high velocities changes the mass of matter. It logically follows that accelerating at near the speed of light is a variable amount of this mass dilation. Jumping over the first effect (traveling near the speed of light changes mass) and going directly to the next effect (accelerating near the speed of light has a variable change of mass) is just confusing. The whole point of technical writing is to educate, not confuse the typical reader with way-abstract points.
In hopes of achieving yet another compromise with you, I've changed it to “traveling near the speed of light.” It avoids nailing the issue down to just “velocity,” while dodging the potentially misleading added specificity of “accelerating.” Please also consider allowing the change from “object” to “matter.” This permits the deletion of “gaining atomic material” and similar caveats. As you can see, it conveys the same concept, just in a much more compact way.
As regards your wondering about this ‘newton thing’ (OMG!), that's the very definition of the kilogram. Along with the units for acceleration, it adds extra specificity to mass, acceleration, and force. It solidly deserves to be in this Wikipedia article.
Greg L ( my talk) 04:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
To quote myself from this very page
“ | I am removing the Request for Comment template because we haven't gotten any new comments in three days, and
Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Maths,_science,_and_technology really doesn't appear to be a very lively place; other RfCs there are also only netting one or two outside editor comments. This RfC only netted two outside editor opinions, one for the inclusion and one against. The argument for inclusion, from an anonymous editor, boils down to "I wouldn't have been able to find it if it wasn't in this article," but I think that is untrue, as any version of this article without extensive discussion of mass v. weight and the issues in massing objects WILL have extensive and obvious links to locations with that information.
So, here's my summary of the current state of opinions. Everyone agrees that mass vs. weight and issues of massing are important. User:Greg L and 66.108.28.133 (note: this IP has made no edits outside of contributing to this RfC) think that these issues should be in this article because otherwise they'd be hard to find and/or hard to maintain against degredation. User:Enuja, User:Yath, User:JimWae and User:Seth Bresnett think that these issues should be in one common article, to which all mass and weight units can all linked, so that there is one clear, correct, and accessible explanation in Wikipedia. We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be. Does everyone agree with that summary? Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article? If so, does everyone agree that the next thing we need to do is decide where all of this information should go? Because some of it is already in weight, I figured that the place for that discussion is Talk:weight but no one has yet responded to my talk page post there. Enuja 18:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC) |
” |
Unfortunately, no-one replied to that.
As far as I can see, there is as close to a consensus as possible that issues about mass versus weight (and, I'd assume, about relativity!) should be in other articles, so that the hard work is accessible to many readers. Instead, Greg L and JimWae continue to edit here the sections mentioned in the RfC. JimWae, do you still think that these sections should be in weight? Personally, I was trying to avoid stepping on toes by building a consensus here, but I feel that I, and the consensus, are being ignored. I'm trying to avoid editing here the sections that I think should go elsewhere; JimWae, if you still think that they should go elsewhere, we should move those sections instead of working on them here. Enuja (talk) 16:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Greg L, my height is 5'2" or 1.57 meters. I'm short. A username I used on online talk boards was "elfy" and came from that. I liked how "elfy" sounds, but not the diminutive "y", so I turned a description of me (A June, as June is my first name) backwards for my username. Then, one of the first major editing things I did was trim some bloated parts of Whaling (which is still a fairly unreadable article), so I figured it would be cute, consistent with my personality, and consistent with the fact that I didn't have much on my user page, to say "Shorter is Better!" Why do I have to explain this on the kilogram talk page?
Yes, I recently updated my user page (which also had five userboxes and the wikipedia signpost template) as a result of goings on here, because I realized that you misinterpreted what I thought was a funny, succinct statement. I did not want you to continue to misinterpret that, and I did not want other people in the future to misinterpret it, so I changed it. How is that a problem?
Please stop attacking me (and JimWae, and anyone else) personally. How did all everyone who contributes regularly to this article become "my gang?" Greg L, you went to my talk page, twice, to ask to me wiegh in on this issue. Just because I ended up disagreeing with you does not mean that I'm part of a gang opposing you. You did an edit which several editors, including me, disagreed with. I tried to convince you to approach this article differently. You were not convinced. I put out a request for comments. Then I tried to summarize the request for comments. I am not acting like an administrator in any way; I am trying to follow general wikipedia guidelines for writing collaboratively and buiding consensus. Nothing I am trying to do is in any way reserved for the use of administrators.
Honestly, Greg L, you are the reason kilogram is currently in relatively GOOD shape. It IMPROVED recently. I'm not trying to tell you this to pat you on the back and make you feel better. You have made lots and lots of good contributions to this article. But that doesn't mean what you write is the best this article can be. You need to let other editors edit what you add, and sometimes even remove what you add, without attacking them. Please re-read WP:OWN, please keep contributing to this article, and please stop attacking people whenever they disagree with you. Enuja (talk) 18:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
If entire sections don't really belong in any article, or are poorly written, they get edited and/or deleted soon enough by others. For instance, check out Specific heat capacity. I did to that article, what I essentially did here: I completely re-wrote it. I fixed gobs of errors along the way. There was a serious misstatement of fact in that poor article that persisted for 229 days just because the text got so convoluted, no one wanted to wade through its to really understand what the hell it was trying to say. There was no vitriolic hyperbole over my re-write, as if I was playing in someone's sandbox and was unwelcome. Don’t bother poo-pooing this last statement; that's what JimWae’s actions and attitude comes across to me as. In fact, with the Specific heat capacity article, another editor later suggested we merge Heat capacity into Specific heat capacity. So I then transplanted the necessary text and two other editors collaborated to delete the Heat capacity article (which no longer exists). Now this is the important part: Note the article's history. Do you see how we regular contributors (those with user pages) are sitting back letting the rest of the world (regular folk with only I.P. addresses) have at it. We’re just watching for now, ready to correct obvious goofs or piss-poor wording.
Have you considered allowing this process—letting others (the rest of the world) have a crack at it—to take place on the Kilogram article, instead of taking it upon yourself to decide what you’re willing to permit stay and what must go?
Greg L (
my talk)
22:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
P.S.: I also have little patience for your tactic of stating a fact: “We haven't come to a consensus on where mass versus weight and the issues of massing should be” …and then trying to create the impression that a consensus has been reached by ‘suggesting as much’ in the form of a question: “Is this status quo a consensus for taking a detailed treatment of these subjects out of the article?” …and then proposing specific action to begin deleting the section founded upon your own, faulty, rhetorical question. You even solicited JimWae to begin doing the dirty work and heavy lifting for you. I’d tell you what I really think about that stunt, and trying to pass yourself off as an unbiased mediator seeking only Truth, Justice, and the Wikipedian Way™® SM ©, but you’d likely claim it was a “personal attack.”
Greg L (
my talk)
22:37, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The children's riddle is more like "Which weighs more, a ton of lead or a ton of feathers?" This (ton of aluminum) seems to be an example of inventing "common mistakes" just to make a point.
compare
Some rationale can be made for a section distinguishing mass from weight in the mass article, the weight article, and perhaps even in the kilogram article - but little if any case has been made for distinguishing 2 (or 3) types of weight (weight in vacuum, vs weight in air, vs weight in any fluid) in the kilogram article. Such distinctions belong in the weight article. Our new contributor continues to make massive edits (some good, several incorrect or misleading) to the article & ignores (per:"I'm not interested in what a (very) small group of regular editors feel") all pleas for sober second thought here. He justifies his editing of others' contributions with arguments he rejects when others try to apply those arguments to his edits -- JimWae 18:00, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic velocity with respect to an observer). Accordingly, astronauts in microgravity exert no effort to lift loose objects inside their spacecraft since those objects are hovering. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, a 100-kilogram object accelerates at only one-hundredth the rate of a 1-kilogram object when an astronaut pushes on them with equal force.
1. Effort is required in both cases
2. There is no connection between sentences.
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object above the cabin floor since they naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object to the same velocity as a 1-kilogram object.
The kilogram is a unit of mass, which corresponds to the intuitive idea of “how much matter there is in an object.” Mass is an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. An object with a mass of one kilogram will accelerate at one meter/second² (about one-tenth the acceleration of Earth’s gravity) when acted upon (pushed by) a force of one newton (symbol: N).
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic velocity with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no work is required to lift loose objects inside their spacecraft since those objects are hovering. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must perform one hundred times more work to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as a 1-kilogram object.
This entire section needs to go to end of article -- JimWae 18:14, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
The kilogram is a unit of mass, a property roughly corresponding to the intuitive idea of "how much matter there is in an object". Mass is also an inertial property; that is, the tendency of an object to remain at constant velocity (including a velocity of zero) unless acted upon by an outside force. While objects in zero-gravity are far easier to lift than they are on Earth, moving a 1,000 kilogram object, even in zero-gravity, requires 100 times more force than moving a 10 kilogram object (assuming both objects were equally accelerated). This can be experienced on Earth by comparing the force needed to push a rowboat in water with the force needed to push (and move) an ocean-liner. While the weight of an object can change depending on the strength of the gravitational field it is near and its distance from it, the mass of an object is constant (assuming it has not lost or gained any atomic material, and that its velocity is also constant).
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