Aren’t Weight and Mass the Same Thing?

The simple answer to that is: no, they are not.

Mass is the amount of matter in an object


Mass is how much matter an object contains. For example, a bowling ball has a mass of 10 pounds.

bowling ball

Weight is a force


Weight, on the other hand, is a measure of how much gravity is enacted on an object. For us here on Earth, that is now much force the Earth’s gravity is using to pull down on an object.


So, in space, our bowling ball would still have a mass of 10 pounds, but its weight is 0 pounds.


So why do we say weight instead of mass?


We simplify these terms because gravity is the same everywhere on Earth, so we don’t notice the difference. However, they do not mean the same thing and they can have different measures.


Our bowling ball, for example, has a different weight on the other planets in our solar system:

solar system

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