(8) A person weighs 60 N on Earth. What will be his weight in space?
Answers
Answer:
60Kg. Mass does not vary by the strength of the gravitational field. What changes is the weight which will only be about one-sixth of what it is on Earth. So a 60Kg mass on the Moon would weigh approximately the same as a 10Kg mass on the Earth.
Answer:
60Kg. Mass does not vary by the strength of the gravitational field. What changes is the weight which will only be about one-sixth of what it is on Earth. So a 60Kg mass on the Moon would weigh approximately the same as a 10Kg mass on the Earth.
Of course this is all confused because in common usage people refer to Kg as weight and, indeed, scales tend to be calibrated such that what’s shown as a weight is actually the mass. This is necessary as the weight of an object at one of the poles is about 1% higher than at the equator due to the distance to the centre of the planet being less at the poles and due to the centripetal force of the Earth’s rotation at the equator cancelling out some of the force of gravity. Balancing scales do this automatically - electronic scales have to be calibrated for latitude and sometimes even altitude.
So, you can see this is somewhat complex. But the simple principle is mass is a fixed property of an object (or at least what’s called the “rest mass” is for pedants). Weight is the force pulling that object towards the centre of whatever planet (or Moon) it’s standing in. Except, of course, the point that calses are usually actually calibrated to show mass and not weight…