my son asked me how heavy is the world can anyone help me so i can tell him?

Question

and why is the weather always nice when the kids go back to school

and yes i know it floats in space as i did tell him that but then he said i do know that mum i'm not stupid but how heavy would it be

and i know it should be mass and not wieght but i'm just saying what my son said(he's 8) so please stop pointing it out

Answer 1

Oh gosh, if he is only 8, just tell him that it weights a lot. LOL.

Seriously though, I did a search in wikipedia, and I found that the total mass of the Earth is 5.9742×10^24 kg, or basically 6,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000 kg.

I'm not sure if your kid will understand that number. Heck, I can barely grasp it. But it should be a fun exercise, and I commend you for doing having these type of questions with your kids.

Have fun.

Answer 2

If you can work this one out then you are one clever women, good luck trying.



It would be more proper to ask, "What is the mass of planet Earth?"1 The quick answer to that is: approximately 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6E+24) kilograms.

The interesting sub-question is, "How did anyone figure that out?" It's not like the planet steps onto the scale each morning before it takes a shower. The measurement of the planet's weight is derived from the gravitational attraction that the Earth has for objects near it.

It turns out that any two masses have a gravitational attraction for one another. If you put two bowling balls near each other, they will attract one another gravitationally. The attraction is extremely slight, but if your instruments are sensitive enough you can measure the gravitational attraction that two bowling balls have on one another. From that measurement, you could determine the mass of the two objects. The same is true for two golf balls, but the attraction is even slighter because the amount of gravitational force depends on mass of the objects.

Newton showed that, for spherical objects, you can make the simplifying assumption that all of the object's mass is concentrated at the center of the sphere. The following equation expresses the gravitational attraction that two spherical objects have on one another:

F = G * M1 * M2 / R2
R is the distance separating the two objects.
G is a constant that is 6.67259x10-11m3/s2 kg.
M1 and M2 are the two masses that are attracting each other.
F is the force of attraction between them.
Assume that Earth is one of the masses (M1) and a 1-kg sphere is the other (M2). The force between them is 9.8 kg*m/s2 -- we can calculate this force by dropping the 1-kg sphere and measuring the acceleration that the Earth's gravitational field applies to it (9.8 m/s2).

The radius of the Earth is 6,400,000 meters (6,999,125 yards). If you plug all of these values in and solve for M1, you find that the mass of the Earth is 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms (6E+24 kilograms / 1.3E+25 pounds).

1 It is "more proper" to ask about mass rather than weight because weight is a force that requires a gravitational field to determine. You can take a bowling ball and weigh it on the Earth and on the moon. The weight on the moon will be one-sixth that on the Earth, but the amount of mass is the same in both places. To weigh the Earth, we would need to know in which object's gravitational field we want to calculate the weight. The mass of the Earth, on the other hand, is a constant.

Answer 3

This was taken from an article on the weight of the earth:

'Jens Gundlach and Stephen Merkowitz from the University of Washington have found that the Earth
weighs in at 5.972 sextillion (5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000) metric tons. While this is just a shade under the current textbook estimate of 5.98 sextillion metric tons, it could make all the difference to nailing down the gravitational constant, or Big G.'

The weather one, however, I can't help you with. Maybe because of the time of year?

Answer 4

The Earth has a mass equal to 5.9742 x 10^24 kg. This is, almost 6 trillion trillion kilograms, or 6 septillion kilograms. That's the same as about 13 septillion pounds. It's important to remember that this is a mass, not a weight. Things have weight because of the Earth's gravitational pull on them. The Earth itself can't be meaningfully measured by that standard.

Answer 5

the Earth's mass (not weight) is roughly 6e24 kilos, or 1.3e25 pounds (yes, I know, a pound is a unit of force, but a kilo weighs 2.2 pounds and i'll use pounds anyway).

With my children I write on a piece of paper say, their weight in pounds, say 45. Then the weight of my car, say 4'000 pounds. Then the weight of the Earth, 13 and then 24 zeroes. This kind of helps realise how big it is.


as for the weather and school, I don't think it's true ;-) But what does happen is that we notice it more, especially on the first days of back to school when the kids still acutely remember how wonderfully free they were to play outside...

Answer 6

I don't know how heavy the world is, but i know that if there weren't any McDonald's then it would be considerably less (if you think about what hapens to the people who eat there!)
Oh and the weather is always nice when kids go back to school because fate is good like that!

Answer 7

Scientists are now saying the Earth is a little lighter than we thought. The calculated weight is 5.978 sextillion metric tons, or 5,978 followed by 18 zeros. But the latest measurements show the true weight is actually 5.972 sextillion metric tons. So, does this mean the Earth is losing weight?

Answer 8

Around 10 to the power 31 kgs.

Answer 9

The word doesn't have a 'weight' because it is suspended in space. You know how astronauts float, same for the earth. And the weather is always nice because its summer! ..lol

Answer 10

The mass of the earth is approximately 6 sextillion metric tons