[tlhIngan Hol] weight of cheb

[De'vID]

On Wed, 28 Oct 2020 at 09:30, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I know that {cheb} is defined as "roughly 5 lbs" in Okrand's Usenet
> message. And the BoP poster mentions the weight of {cheb'a'} in the
> following relationship:
>
> 375,000 cheb'a' = 8.7 KT
>
> I remember reading that 1 {cheb'a'} might be 9 {cheb},


It is commonly assumed that a {cheb'a'} is 9 {cheb}, but Dr. Okrand did not
explicitly state this. He only said that "most units" of measure had forms
with {-'a'} added to mean 9 times. The report of that conversation is here:
https://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/1999/February/msg00061.html


> but no matter
> what I calculate, I don't get it – so where's my error?
>

You are most certainly using the wrong definition of "KT". If you use an
American "short" ton and assume a factor of 9, you get:

8.7 KT = 8.7 × 1000 × 2000 lb = 17,400,000 lb = 375,000 × 46.4 lb = 375,000
× 9 × 5.156 lb (2.339 kg)

This is close to the stated value of "around five pounds (2.25 kg or so)".
If you go in the other direction, assuming a value of 5 lbs:

375,000 × 9 × 5 lb = 16875000 lb = 8.43 KT

Or if you start with the given value in kg:
375,000 × 9 × 2.25 kg = 7593750 kg = 16741353 lb = 8.37 KT

These are within a few percent of the stated value of 8.7 KT. Presumably,
the difference is between the gravity on Qo'noS and the gravity on Earth,
since "pounds" are a unit of weight, not mass. The original msn message in
which {cheb} appears refers to it as a unit of weight, but gives a
conversion to kg (but presumably under Earth or near-Earth gravity).

http://klingonska.org/canon/1997-10-22-news.txt

-- 
De'vID
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