What is the difference between weight and mass?
Mass is the amount of matter in a solid object, or a volume of a gas or liquid. Weight is the force of gravity acting on a mass. If you were to move an object, for example a lump of cheese, from the Earth to the Moon, its mass would not change, but it will weigh less. This is because the amount of matter in the cheese stays the same, but the gravitational force acting on the cheese by the Moon would be less than the gravitational force acting on the cheese on Earth. Weight should be measured in Newtons and has a direction component (vector). This direction is normally downward due to gravity, a force between two objects that depends on the mass of the objects and the distance between them. (The Earth has much larger mass than the Moon). A component of weight can also be sideways, such as the force of a car hitting a wall. Mass is usually measured in kilograms. The above is a scientific definition. In day-to-day life. most people use the term weight when measuring the mass of objects, s
It’s a good thing you’re learning it now – this simple thing will kill you in physics if you don’t know the difference. In every day language, we assume that weight and mass are the same thing when they really aren’t. Weight is the amount of gravitational force acting on an object. The more gravity, the larger the weight. For example, here on Earth Joe weighs 60 kg. But on the moon, where the gravitational pull is 1/6 of that on Earth, he only weighs 10 kg. Mass is the measurement of the amount of matter within an object. Joe’s mass didn’t change in-between his flight from the Earth to the moon, but is weight did. Mass is not affected by gravitational fields as weight is.
