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?

Question

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

Answer 1

Mass and weight are not the same. However since we live in an environment where gravity is pretty much the same everywhere, any measure of mass implies a certain weight, and any weight implies a certain mass. So, we use units for mass and weight interchangeability.

A gram is a unit of mass, but if you know something has a gram of mass, you know it has a weight of 0.0098 Newtons.