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Slug (mass)

 

 
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Slug (mass)
 
 
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The slug is an English unit
English unit

English units refers to the historical units of measurement in medieval England, which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxons and Ancient Roman units of measurement systems of units....
 of mass
Mass

In physical science, mass refers to the degree of acceleration a body acquires when subject to a force: bodies with greater mass are accelerated less by the same force....
. It is a mass that accelerates by 1 ft/s² when a force of one pound-force
Pound-force

The pound-force or simply pound is a Units of measurement of force....
 (lbf) is exerted on it. Therefore a slug has a mass of 32.17405 pound-mass or 14.5939 kg.

The slug is part of a subset of coherent units known as the gravitational foot-pound-second system (FPS), one of several such specialized systems of mechanical units developed in the late 19th and the 20th century.

The slug was first used in 1902 by Arthur Mason Worthington (1852–1916) in Dynamics of Rotation (OED
Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989; as of December 2008 the dictionary's current editors have completed a quarter of the third edition....
), but it didn't see any significant use until decades later.






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The slug is an English unit
English unit

English units refers to the historical units of measurement in medieval England, which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxons and Ancient Roman units of measurement systems of units....
 of mass
Mass

In physical science, mass refers to the degree of acceleration a body acquires when subject to a force: bodies with greater mass are accelerated less by the same force....
. It is a mass that accelerates by 1 ft/s² when a force of one pound-force
Pound-force

The pound-force or simply pound is a Units of measurement of force....
 (lbf) is exerted on it. Therefore a slug has a mass of 32.17405 pound-mass or 14.5939 kg.

The slug is part of a subset of coherent units known as the gravitational foot-pound-second system (FPS), one of several such specialized systems of mechanical units developed in the late 19th and the 20th century.

The slug was first used in 1902 by Arthur Mason Worthington (1852–1916) in Dynamics of Rotation (OED
Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989; as of December 2008 the dictionary's current editors have completed a quarter of the third edition....
), but it didn't see any significant use until decades later. A 1928 textbook says: "No name has yet been given to the unit of mass and, in fact, as we have developed the theory of dynamics no name is necessary. Whenever the mass, m, appears in our formulae, we substitute the ratio of the convenient force-acceleration pair (w/g), and measure the mass in lbs. per ft./sec.² or in grams per cm./sec.²".

Another name for this unit in early literature is the geepound.

The unit slinch (derived from the words slug-inch ) is an inch version of the slug (1 slinch = 1 lbf·s²/in = 12 slugs). The unit blob (bl) is also an inch version of the slug (1 lbf·s²/in).

Source: Mechanical Measurements

External links

  • for a detailed mathematical explanation