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

Grams is strictly not a measurement of weight. The correct unit to use is Newton. But we can make an assumption of standard gravity which means that we can measure the mass of something directly by measuring its weight. So we do often use grams for weight as a shorthand.