OK so I haven't taken much in terms of physics but something that has always confused me is how is mass and weight different yet you measure mass by weighing it? Probably a stupid question but I wanted to ask.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Many, many people are confused by this. The distinction is subtle, but pretty easy to understand if you think about it the right way.
The difference is that mass is a property of an object, a measure of inertia. Weight is a force. The mass of an object is a measure of how much matter is in the object. The weight of an object is how much the object is affected by gravity. This is the key distinction, weight depends on gravity and mass does not. So if you went to Mars, you would have a different weight (because the gravity is different) but you would have the same mass.
Mass can be confusing because we can’t directly measure it. But, because we know the strength of gravity on Earth, we can measure an object’s weight and perform a simple calculation (which most scales will do for you) to calculate the object’s mass. That’s why you can weigh an object to get its mass. If you were to use that same scale on Mars, it would read the wrong mass.
– Admin Noah
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