“W = Mg”

Abstract

I SHOULD like to take exception to Prof. Greenhill's statement in your issue of September 24 (vol. xliv. p. 493) that “when goods are sold in commerce by weight, they are weighed in scales, and the weight is the same wherever the weighing is carried out, whether at the equator, or the poles, or in the Moon, Sun, or Jupiter.” In this country it is the commonest thing in the world to see goods sold in commerce weighed in a spring-balance, which is also the universal kitchen weighing apparatus, and I respectfully submit that the weight indicated would not be quite the same in the Moon, Sun, or Jupiter.