from Hacker News

Newtons Are a Unit of Mileage

by dbaupp on 3/3/25, 10:02 PM with 6 comments

• by sudosysgen on 3/4/25, 7:35 PM

  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.

• by titaniumtown on 3/4/25, 12:57 PM

  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!

• by madcaptenor on 3/4/25, 2:28 AM

  Mileage for gas cars is measured in square meters: https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/

• by anticensor on 3/4/25, 5:32 AM

  I indeed knew the energy equivalent mileage simplified to tractive effort. What else could it have simplified to?