Lets suppose the Earth weighs 100,000 lbs. (just follow along).
I want to build a car from raw materials. The car will weigh 4000 lbs.
Does the the weight of the Earth change at that point or do the materials of the car equal the final weight of the car?
Same with humans. A baby weighs 10lbs at birth but when grown is 250lbs.
I suppose my question is that is the Earth’s weight a set weight or does is fluxuate barring any meteors an space junk.
In: 1
Weight requires a reference point. What you are talking about is mass.
The mass of the earth changes when something is added or removed. If you picked up a rock and threw it to the moon, the mass of the earth would go down and the mass of the moon would go up.
However, building things doesn’t add or remove anything. In your car example, all the metal is mined out of the earth, all the plastic is refined from oil that was in the earth, etc. You’re just repurposing materials.
Now, maybe during refining some stuff burns and loses mass in the process of being made into a new product, but you’re not adding mass when you build anything.
Same goes for babies. We eat food that was already on the planet, no mass is being added or removed, at least not in any significant way. I suppose you could eat some beans and fart and that methane might escape the atmosphere, but I’m getting carried away.
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