Your correspondent Geoffrey Hammond is being somewhat pedantic in calling for the carbon footprint' — amounts of carbon expressed in tonnes — to be called instead the 'carbon weight', because the essential property of a footprint is its area ("Time to give due weight to the 'carbon footprint' issue" Nature 445,256; 2007). A true pedant would, however, have gone the full distance! If units of carbon are expressed in kilograms, tonnes and so on, the proper term is 'carbon mass'. Weight is the vertical force acting on a body as a result of gravity. The SI unit of weight is a newton, which has base dimensions of kg m s~(-2). Balances measure weight, but are calibrated to give the answer in units of mass.
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机译：您的通讯员杰弗里·哈蒙德（Geoffrey Hammond）在呼吁将“碳足迹”（以吨表示的碳量）称为“碳重量”时有些脚，因为足迹的本质是面积（“适当称重的时间”到“碳足迹”问题” Nature 445,256； 2007）。但是，一个真正的学徒会全力以赴！如果碳单位以千克，吨等表示，则适当的术语是“碳质量”。重量是重力作用在身体上的垂直力。 SI的重量单位是牛顿，其基本尺寸为kg m s〜（-2）。天平可测量重量，但会进行校准以质量单位给出答案。
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