ProLesson 3 of 36 min read

Mass and weight: what's the difference?

Understand why mass stays the same everywhere while weight changes with gravity, and calculate weight using W = m g.

In everyday speech people say "I weigh 50 kilograms". In science, that sentence mixes up two different ideas. Mass and weight are linked, but they are not the same thing, and confusing them leads to wrong answers about motion, space travel and even bathroom scales.

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