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 is how much ‘stuff’ you have in a thing. Weight is how heavy it feels in gravity.

That’s why you would weight differently on different planets.

So your mass isn’t changing, you’re still made of the same stuff…. but your weight changes because bigger planets will pull on you harder than smaller planets…. so you weight more on large planets than you do on smaller planets, but you have the same mass.