Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Newtons Are a Unit of Mileage (huonw.github.io)
24 points by dbaupp 473 days ago
4 comments

I'm pretty sure there's an issue in the first equation. A Nm (Newton-meter) is the cross-product between a force and a distance and is a vector quantity (more specifically a bivector), while a watt is a dot product and is a scalar quantity. Converting Nm to W is a dimensional analysis error.

Similarly mileage is force along the direction of travel, but that's moreso a nitpick.

I'm not very good at dinensional analysis, but both 'units' and Wolfram Alpha agree that Nm and Wh are interchangeable.
I've actually done the same thing with modeling my car at different speeds! I used linear regression though haha. I have the same car too!What a coincidence. Time to compare homework!
Mileage for gas cars is measured in square meters: https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/
Or inverse acres.
I indeed knew the energy equivalent mileage simplified to tractive effort. What else could it have simplified to?