Human body mass is measured with what unit?

Answer 1

Human body mass, just like every other object mass that somebody wants to measure, is measured with the unit that will result in the most convenient numbers ... neither too small nor too large. The kilogram turns out to be a very convenient-sized unit, and is widely used. For human beings, it produces numbers between about 1 (extreme pre-mature newborn) and 250 (morbidly obese adult), which are easy numbers to record, report, and remember. If you're actually asking about the so-called Body Mass Index (BMI), then that's a completely different story: The definition of the BMI is: (Weight, in kilograms) divided by (Height, in meters)squared. This is a totally made-up quantity. It's been found to be very highly correlated with body fat, and so it's very useful, but the dimensions of the number turn out to be wierd units: Kilograms per square meter, which is not a unit that's easy for people to visualize. Consequently, only total nerds and geeks ever actually calculate their BMI. It's almost always picked off of a chart ... especially in the US, where nobody knows their kilograms or their meters anyway. For more on the BMI, have a look at www.nhlbi.nih.gov