Mass explanation: I’ve always been told that mass was not the same as weight, and that grams are the metric unit of mass. But grams are a measurement of weight, so am I stupid, was it was explained to me wrong, or is science just not make sense?
In: 140
Mass means the **amount of stuff**.
Weight means **the force with which that stuff is being pulled with towards the planet**.
When a bit of Elon musk’s rocket takes off on the earth and lands on mars (presuming the part wasn’t expended and stayed the same), its mass – the amount of stuff – you’re basically counting the amount of stuff in the atoms it is composed of – will remain the same. Its weight on Mars, however, eg the force with which the rocket part and the planet pull on each other, will have changed from what it was back on earth, because Mars gravity is different.
At an even more basic level, the reason for that gravitational pull planets have on us is the mass of the planet. The force two bodies exert on each other depends on their mass. Of course the mass of a planet is so, so so much bigger than that of a small object like a rocket, that the impact the rocket has on the planet is approximately nil, while the impact of the planet on the rocket is pretty significant.
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