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All the objects, be they living or nonliving, have some amount of Mass in their body. This Mass also creates some kind of force on our body. The mass of people in a population differs from person to person. Not all of them will have the same Mass and the force which it creates, weight. There is always a misunderstanding regarding the two concepts of Mass and Weight, that creates confusion in the minds of the people. Some people even use them interchangeably with each other. It should be remembered that both concepts differ from each other.
What is Mass?
Every object around us has a certain amount of Mass in its body, which is the measure of matter that is present in your body. It has no effect by the forces of acceleration, gravitation, location and the area where a person lives. Being a scalar quantity, we can measure the mass of a body in kilograms or grams.
Let’s take the example of Newton’s second law to understand the concept satisfactorily in a better way.
If an object of Mass ‘m’ is traveling with a acceleration of ‘a, the force required to move that body is shown by the formula
F=m×a
Under this example, Mass acts as a kind of resistance to the body that reduces its momentum or velocity. So, it can be concluded that the larger is the mass of a body, the larger is its resistance towards the force created on the object and thus minimum change is seen in the thing.
What is Weight?
Weight refers to the different forces that act on the body near the earth’s surface. Particularly, the concept is related to the actions of forces of gravitation and acceleration on the object, due to which a reactionary alteration happens in the object.
Weight is the force that pulls an object towards the earth’s surface, thus it is also considered as to how heavy an object is, with all the forces acting. If we have to measure the weight, we have a formula where we include mass and the forces of gravity acting on it.
W=m×g
In this formula, a body of mass ‘m’ has a gravitational pull acting on it that derives the weight of an object. However, this formula is only applicable when only the force of gravity is acting on the object, and other forces are kept constant for a while.
Difference between Weight and Mass
Definition
Mass refers to the measure of the amount of matter in our body. When a type of force acts on the mass due to the forces of acceleration or gravity, then that measure of the force acting on the object is referred to as Weight. Thus, the force is caused due to the gravitational pull on the object which.
Representation
The mass of a body is represented by the letter ‘m’. On the other hand, the weight of a body is represented with mg in the formula.
W=m×g
In this formula, a body of mass ‘m’ has a gravitational pull acting on it that derives the weight of an object.
Type of quantity
The mass of an object is a scalar quantity which means the quantity only provides us with the magnitude of the body and not its direction. But on the other hand, the weight of an object is a vector quantity that provides us with information regarding the magnitude and the direction in which the object is going.
Effect of gravitational force
The weight of an object is related to the actions of forces of gravitation and acceleration on the object, due to which a reactionary alteration happens in the object. But the force of gravitation does not affect the mass of an object.
Changes due to location
If we take the case of the mass, it remains constant at all locations, irrespective of the existence of gravitation in an area. Nonetheless, the weight of an object doesn’t remain constant i.e., it increases or decreases with how the gravitation changes or alters in an area.
Measurement
The mass of an object is usually measured by balances like calibrated, analytical and beam balance. On the other hand, we have different balances for the measurement of the weight of a body. Weight is usually measured with balances like compression and spring. One thing that should be remembered is the use of kg or g as the unit of Mass and Newton as the unit of Weight.
Conclusion
You would be surprised after knowing that your body will have different weights on different planets where you will have the same weight on Venus, as it is the same in mass and size as Earth. Now you should be able to understand that Mass refers to the measure of the amount of matter in our body. When a type of force acts on the mass due to the forces of acceleration or gravity, then that measure of the force acting on the object is referred to as Weight. But you won’t have that same on the planet like Uranus. You will weigh lighter than what you are at present here on Earth. So, it is about the mass and size of these planets that differ our weights.
