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Weight/Mass | Convert from hundredweight [short, US] to slug |
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Common Weight Conversions Metric Weight Conversions Unit Definition (hundredweight [short, US]) The hundredweight is a traditional unit of weight equal to 1/20 ton. In the United States, where the currency was decimalized and there wasn't so much need to align the unit with the quintal and zentner, the hundredweight came to equal exactly 100 pounds (about 45.3592 kilograms). The U.S. hundredweight seems to have been invented by merchants around 1840. To distinguish the two hundredweight units, the British version is often called the long hundredweight and the American is called the short hundredweight or cental. Unit Definition (slug) The slug is a unit of mass in the English foot-pound-second system. One slug is the mass accelerated at 1 foot per second per second by a force of 1 pound. Since the acceleration of gravity (g) in English units is 32.174 04 feet per second per second, the slug is equal to 32.174 04 pounds (14.593 90 kilograms). The slug was formerly used in calculations in mechanics and engineering, but it has been largely abandoned in favor of metric units. The unit was called the "engineer's mass unit" during the late nineteenth century. The British physicist A. M. Worthington first called it a slug in a 1902 textbook. (Probably he had in mind older uses of the word to mean a weight or a projectile. In the 1600's a slug was a roughly shaped lump of metal shot from a primitive cannon.)
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