mass and weight are pretty much the same
thing are they no they're not there's a
very simple way to understand the
difference mass is simply the amount of
matter that's present in the object now
consider two situations one in which an
object is on the earth and second in
which the same object is on the moon
will the mass of the object be different
in these cases to answer this question
we ask ourselves another simple question
well the amount of matter present in the
object be different in these cases
absolutely not
the matter in the object is not changing
at all which is why the mass will be the
same in each of the cases the mass of an
object remains constant no matter where
it is placed the standard metric unit of
mass is the kilogram another concept
we'd learnt about an object's mass was
that it is a measure of its inertia
greater the mass of an object greater
will be its inertia inertia is nothing
but the tendency of an object to resist
change in its state of motion so now we
have an idea about what masses but
what's weight then how do we understand
the weight of an object mass is nothing
but the measure of how much matter an
object has weight is a measure of how
strongly gravity pulls on that matter
it's the measurement of the
gravitational pull of an object let's
understand this using a simple example
say there are two places place a and
place B and there is an object of mass M
in place a the pull of gravity is X
units and in place B the pull of gravity
is 2x units
clearly the pull of gravity is stronger
at least B now understand this well the
mass of the object will be M at both the
places but the weight of the object will
be greater at place B because the pull
of gravity is stronger as the gravity is
twice as bigger
weight of the object will be twice as
much at place B as compared to place a
so the weight of an object is a
measurement of gravitational force
acting on it how can we understand
weight using a formula we know the
Newton's second law of motion which says
that the force acting on an object is
the product of its mass and acceleration
when its acceleration due to gravity we
can replace a with a lowercase G this
force due to gravity is nothing but the
weight of the object so if we consider
the weight of an object to be uppercase
W we can rewrite this equation as W
equals M times G so the weight of an
object is the product of its mass and
acceleration YouTube gravity what will
be the SI unit of weight can you guess
it will be the same as that of force
Newton as the value of G at a particular
place is constant we can also say that
the weight of the object is directly
proportional to its mass here's the main
takeaway from this video the mass of an
object remains constant everywhere
whereas its weight depends on the
gravitational force at the location
Explain the difference between mass and weight. written like a 8th grader and short