Slugs to Pounds (slug to lb)

1 slug equals 32.17404856 pounds (rounded).

1 slug = 32.17404856 pounds

How to convert slugs to pounds

To convert slugs to pounds, multiply the number of slugs by 32.17404856. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply pounds by 0.03108095017 (rounded).

pounds = slugs × 32.17404856

Example: 10 slugs = 321.7404856 pounds.

About these units

Slug (slug)

US customaryTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

About 14.594 kg. The US engineering unit of mass: the mass that accelerates at 1 ft/s² under a force of 1 pound-force.

Physics teachers in feet-and-pounds countries face an awkward fact: the pound is used both as a unit of mass and as a unit of force. The slug removes the ambiguity. It is the mass that a force of one pound-force accelerates at one foot per second squared, so that one slug equals one lbf s squared per foot. The British physicist Arthur Mason Worthington is credited with coining the name before 1900, taking it in the sense of a block of metal rather than the mollusc. An older name for it was the geepound.

One slug is about 14.594 kg, which is roughly 32.17 avoirdupois pounds, and the figure used here follows standard gravity, the international foot and the avoirdupois pound. An object of one slug weighs about 143.1 newtons at the Earth's surface. The unit belongs to the gravitational foot-pound-second system and stayed mostly in American engineering while a 1928 textbook noted that no special name was really needed. Its inch-based cousin, 12 slugs, is jokingly called a blob or slinch.

1 slug = 14.59390294 kilograms (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Slug (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Pound (lb)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.45359237 kg, divided into 16 ounces. The standard unit of weight in the US and common in the UK.

Why is pound abbreviated lb? The answer is Roman. The English word comes from the Latin libra pondo, roughly the weight measured in libra, and the symbol keeps the first word. The Roman libra was divided into 12 unciae. The avoirdupois pound of 16 ounces came into general use around 1300 and was initially equal to 6,992 troy grains; under Elizabeth I it was redefined as 7,000 grains. The UK's Weights and Measures Act 1878 set the imperial standard pound as a platinum cylinder, and the troy pound was abolished for trade the following year.

Today the pound is defined from the kilogram. The International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959 fixed it at exactly 0.45359237 kg, and the UK's Weights and Measures Act 1963 wrote the same figure into law. Pounds remain the everyday unit for body weight, groceries and shipping in the United States and are widely used in the UK. The word also survives in odd places: a six-pounder cannon was named for the weight of its shot, not its own.

1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pound (mass); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8 (mass conversions)

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