Does your weight change in the elevator when it goes up & down?

Question

Let's say you are standing on a weight-measuring scale inside an elevator: do you think your weight goes up when the elevator goes up and vice-versa?

Answer 1

It depends on the type of scale you're standing on. Your WEIGHT changes, weight being the force between you and the floor. So if you are standing on a bathroom-type scale, it will show an increase.

But your MASS doesn't change, mass being an inherent property of matter. So if you're standing on a balance scale, like they have in a doctor's office, it will show no change.

Answer 2

It depends on when you're looking at the scale.

Gravity (the force the presses your mass down toward the earth's center) is LESSENED by distance. Your mass, however, remains constant.

The acceleration of the elevator floor has to be MORE than gravity to accelerate in either direction, or the car wouldn't move.

So, your apparent weight would be:
(Mass) * (Gravity) = W on the ground floor, no acceleration.

As the car begins to move upward, the floor exerts a force larger than gravity to overcome inertia. Therefore you would see your weight go up ... as long as the car is accelerating.

Once the car is moving with no further upward acceleration (i.e. a steady state upward velocity), you would see your weight return to where it was on the ground floor.

As the car decelerates to a stop, it's allowing gravity to reassert itself. In this case, you'd see your weight go down.

Once you've reached the upper floor and are stationary again, a sufficiently accurate scale would show that you weigh less than you did at ground level ... because you're farther from the center of the earth's gravitational pull.

As you descend from an upper floor to a lower one, the process is reversed.

Answer 3

Absoutely,
Weight = mass*gravity.
Since mass will never change, the only factor that changes the weight of the person in an elevator is the change in gravitational force.
When the elevator goes down, it reduces the gravity by introducing an external force larger than gravity, hence you will feel weightlessness. Vice-Versa wen you go up in the elevator the gravitional force is increased by adding more external force going up and you feel heavier than you really are.
If you what to know how much weight is exactly fluctuated, Pull out your physics book and study gravity.

Answer 4

I'd say it depends on semantics but you could say yes for two reasons:
1: Upward and downward acceleration will change your apparent weight (The number on a scale). The problem is that the gravitational force the Earth is exerting on you is still constant, you've just introduced an inertial force.
2: As you move further from the center of the Earth's mass your weight decreases proportional to R^2 (where R is your distance from the Earth's center of mass), but this is negligible for all practical purposes.

Answer 5

in case you're taking a scale right into a elevator you will see that when it is going up so does you weight and once you down your weight will additionally you could bear in mind that the floor of the elevator is pushing you up at approximately 7- 12mph and while it coming down that is dropping at bearing directly to the same speed

Answer 6

Yes it does change.. your mass does not change but the number on the scale will change as you go up and down. However it will only change while it is accelerating. Once it has reached it's constant speed your weight on the scale will go back to normal.

Answer 7

yes, it does.
your weight will decrease if you are going down with the weight and your weight will increase, if you are going up with the lift.
and, if the cable of the lift snaps during your decent and you fall freely to the ground, and before you crash to the safety bumpers on the ground, your weight will be zero if you read it while standing on the weighing machine.
this is called weightlessness,not the absolute weightlessness though.

and the change and increase in the weight can be calculated using Newton's Third and Second Laws.