Question

Difference between mass of air and weight of air in aviation

Answer 1

Hey.

In common usage, the mass of an object is often referred to as its weight, though these are in fact different concepts and quantities. In scientific contexts, mass refers loosely to the amount of "matter" in an object (though "matter" may be difficult to define), whereas weight refers to the force exerted on an object by gravity.

A balloon has mass but may appear to have no weight or even negative weight, due to buoyancy in air. However the weight of the balloon and the gas inside it has merely been transferred to a large area of the Earth's surface, making the weight difficult to measure. The weight of a flying airplane is similarly distributed to the ground, but does not disappear. If the airplane is in level flight, the same weight-force is distributed to the surface of the Earth as when the plane was on the runway, but spread over a larger area.

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