Explan the difference between mass and weight when teaching students.?

Question

Need to beable to explain the difference between mass and weight to firt of all a 6 year old, then to a 11 year old and then to a 15 year old student.

Answer 1

Mass is a measure of how much matter an object has. Weight is a measure of how strongly gravity pulls on that matter. Thus if you were to travel to the moon your weight would change because the pull of gravity is weaker there than on Earth but, your mass would stay the same because you are still made up of the same amount of matter.

Answered by: A. Godbehere, High School Student, Port Perry


Imagine yourself out is space away from any gravitational field, with a bowling ball in your hands. Let it go and it just floats in front of you. Without gravity, it has no weight. Now grab it again and shake it back and forth. That resistance to being moved is inertia, and mass measures how much inertia an object has. Inertia does NOT depend on gravity.

Mass is determined only by the amount of matter contained in an object.

Any two masses exert a mutual attractive force on each other. The amount of that force is weight. A one kilogram mass on the Earth's surface results in 2.2 pounds of force between the mass and the Earth, so we say the mass weighs 2.2 pounds. That same one kilogram mass on the Moon, because of the Moon's lower mass, results in only about 1/3 pounds of mutual force.

Just remember that the weight of an object depends on where it is, while its mass stays the same.

Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A., Part-time Physics Instructor

Answer 2

Mass measures how much matter an object has. When mass increases, so does weight.

Mass = has an affect on gravity (creates it).
Weight = affected by gravity.

For example: You weigh less on the moon than on Earth, but you still have the same mass. It's the moon that has less mass, and because mass affects gravity, your weight is affected.

Answer 3

Mass of any merchandise is comparable,however the load of the comparable merchandise would be diverse on the earth, moon or the different planet. this is by way of fact the gravitational stress appearing on the object is diverse on diverse planets. So mass stands out as the comparable yet weight is w= f = m x g the place is the load such as f this is gravitational stress, m is the mass and g is the gravitational acceleration

Answer 4

6 year old: mass = the thing you can hold and feel. weight = how heavy it is.
11 year old: mass = the matter/ how bulky. weight = how heavy.
15 year old: ??