From: WikiAnswers
There is a lot of confusion between mass and weight because we use them interchangeably in everyday speech but in physics the difference is important.
In brief - Mass is a measurement of the matter in an object; weight is a measurement of the force from gravity on the object.
Or simpler - A mass measures the quantity of something e.g - a person or an object and a weight is a force which depends on its mass or where it is.
Mass is a fundamental property of an object, matter has mass. The SI unit for mass is the kilogram (kg.) The mass of an object remains the same wherever the object is. A 1kg mass will be a 1kg mass on Earth, the Moon, Mars or in deep space. In very simplified terms mass is how much matter is in the object. Mass stays the same where ever the object is because the amount of matter in the object remains the same.
Weight is the force due to gravity that attracts 2 objects together, typically a planet and the object you are weighing. *)
Gravitational attraction (weight) depends on the mass of the 2 objects and how far apart they are so it is not constant for an object, it depends what other mass is near the object. A 1kg mass will have a weight of:
In brief - Mass is a measurement of the matter in an object; weight is a measurement of the force from gravity on the object.
Or simpler - A mass measures the quantity of something e.g - a person or an object and a weight is a force which depends on its mass or where it is.
Mass is a fundamental property of an object, matter has mass. The SI unit for mass is the kilogram (kg.) The mass of an object remains the same wherever the object is. A 1kg mass will be a 1kg mass on Earth, the Moon, Mars or in deep space. In very simplified terms mass is how much matter is in the object. Mass stays the same where ever the object is because the amount of matter in the object remains the same.
Weight is the force due to gravity that attracts 2 objects together, typically a planet and the object you are weighing. *)
Gravitational attraction (weight) depends on the mass of the 2 objects and how far apart they are so it is not constant for an object, it depends what other mass is near the object. A 1kg mass will have a weight of:
- 9.81N on Earth
- 3.71N on Mars
- 1.62N The Moon
*) The newton is the unit of force in the SI system; it is equal to the amount of force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at a rate of one meter per second per second. In dimensional analysis, F=m x a, multiplying m (kg) by a (m/s2).
Mass is the measure of the amount of matter within an object.
- Weight is the measure of the gravitational pull on an object
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