3

I've been using the GNU units program and I seem to think that I should be able to convert water between a volume and a weight.

Examples:

You have: 1 gram water
You want: cm^3
conformability error
    1 gram water = 9.80665 kg^2 / m^2 s^2
    cm^3 = 1e-06 m^3

and

You have: 1 gallon water
You want: pounds
conformability error
    1 gallon water = 37.122208 kg m / s^2
    pounds = 0.45359237 kg
Caleb
  • 70,105
brianegge
  • 133
  • 4

2 Answers2

5

The water unit is the specific weight of water at the standard temperature of 0°C. A cm water is a unit of pressure, like the cm Hg.

You have: water
You want: 
        Definition: gram force/cm^3 = 9806.65 kg / m^2 s^2

You have: 1cm Hg
You want: cm water
        * 13.5951
        / 0.073555914

A gram water is a unit of mass times pressume divided by length, which I don't recognize as a common physical quantity. Units has waterdensity defined to be the density of water at 4°C and 1atm, which is (to a very good precision) 1kg/m³.

You have: 1g/waterdensity
You want: cm^3
        * 1
        / 1

If you want density in other conditions or of other materials, either type out the constant or put it in your own unit definition file (units -f '' -f ~/.units.data).

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
  • 829,060
2

Technically speaking, you're trying to convert volume into mass or weight. Sure, you wrote "water", but at what temperature and pressure? It makes a difference. And what if you wrote "1 gram mercury"?

You're asking for something that can't be done in the simplistic context in which units works. I think you're going to have to look up the density of the fluid you're interested in, and multiply by yourself.

  • -1, GNU units does actually have a limited selection of densities in its database, it's just that the keyword is waterdensity, not water. – Random832 Jun 28 '11 at 17:20