So, I learned in physics class at school in the UK that the value of acceleration due to gravity is a constant called g and that it was 9.81m/s^2. I knew that this value is not a true constant as it is affected by terrain and location. However I didn’t know that it can be so significantly different as to be 9.776 m/s^2 in Kuala Lumpur for example. I’m wondering if a different value is told to children in school that is locally relevant for them? Or do we all use the value I learned?

  • kamills@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    We learned 9.82 m/^2. But in the classes I have as an engineering student we use 10 m/s^2. And I wish I was kidding when I say it’s because it easier to do the math in your head. Well obviously for safety critical stuff we use the current value for wherever the math problem is located at

    • huginn@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      9.8 is close enough to 10 for most human scale calculations. No need to have extra sig figs

    • Overzeetop@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Interesting that I learned 32.2 ft/s, but only 9.8 m/s - one less significant figure, but only a factor of two in precision (32.2 vs 32 = .6%; 9.81 vs 9.8 is only 0.1%). Here’s the fun part - as a practicing engineer for three decades, both in aerospace and in industry, it’s exceedingly rare that precision of 0.1% will lead to a better result. Now, people doing physics and high-accuracy detection based on physical parameters really do use that kind of precision and it matters. But for almost every physical object and mechanism in ordinary life, refining to better than 1% is almost always wasted effort.

      Being off by 10/9.81x is usually less than the amount that non-modeled conditions will affect the design of a component. Thermal changes, bolt tensions, humidity, temperature, material imperfections, and input variance all conspire to invalidate my careful calculations. Finding the answer to 4 decimal places is nice, but being about to get an answer within 5% or so in your head, quickly, and on site where a solution is needed quickly makes you look like a genius.

      • r_thndr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Even then, once you figure in a safety factor of 2 or 3 as a minimum, the extra precision really gets lost in the fog anyway.

      • kamills@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I gotta say, that explanations sounds way better than shrugging and saying “close enough”. But then again our teachers usually say “fanden være med det” meaning “devil be with that” actually meaning “Fu*k it” when it comes to those small deviations

    • applebusch@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Going to guess civil. I work on space systems and we don’t have one number. We have the g0 value, which is standard gravity out to some precision, but gravity matters enough we don’t even use point mass gravity, we use one of the nonspherical earth gravity models. It matters because orbits.

      • kamills@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Nope. Mechanical engineering. So usually we say g=10 and then make the steel a bit thicker and call it a day