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Mass And Science (Click to select text)
Mass is the amount of matter in an object. When you record mass the unit you use is grams. A medium sized leaf is about 1 gram, a potato chip 2 grams. A larger unit of mass is a kilogram. A kilogram is about the mass of a medium sized textbook. You need a balance to find mass. There are many kinds of balances. The gram is the unit used to measure mass. Mass is a measure of the amount of matter in an object. Mass is different from weight. Weight is the measure of gravitational pull. Your weight on the moon is less because there is not a strong gravitational pull. Mass, on the other hand, is the same anywhere in the universe. Mass is measured with a balance. One balance is a double pan balance that works like a sea saw. Matter Mass is a measure of the amount of matter in an object. Both living and nonliving things are made up of matter. Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. Most matter on earth exists in three states: liquids, solids, and gas. All matter is made up of tiny particles called atoms. An atom is the smallest unit of matter that can exist and still be recognized. You and all the things around you are made of matter. Since we all live at the surface of the earth where the acceleration of gravity is relatively constant, it has been natural for us to confuse the concepts of mass and weight. To study the difference, we need to separate these two "parameters." We could either leave the earth's gravitational field so that we would have no weight, or create an experimental situation where weight is not a factor. An easy way to do this is to use floating objects. Floating objects still have all their mass, and move almost friction-free in still water, but we don't notice their weight since the water supports (opposes) it. A small block of wood floating in water can be pushed back and forth very easily by hand. Pushing a large motorboat requires either a much greater push or a longer time to have the same effect. The effort required changing the motion of an object is a measure of its mass. The motorboat has a lot more mass than the block of wood. The metric unit of mass is the gram, which is the mass of a cube of water, one-hundredth of a meter on a side. A kilogram is the mass of a cube of water one-tenth of a meter on a side. A megagram (metric ton) is the mass of a cubic meter of water. At the earth's surface a kilogram has a weight of about 2.2 pounds. A metric ton has a weight of about 2200 pounds. The metric unit of weight (or any other force - such as that of a stretched spring, or a bat striking a ball, or a locomotive pulling a train) is called the NEWTON. One Newton is defined as the amount of force required causing one kilogram to accelerate one meter per second every second. A Newton is roughly four ounces, or there are about four Newton's to a pound. A kilogram at the earth's surface has a weight of about 9.80 Newton's. Above the earths surface it weighs less and less. Below the earth's surface (in a mine or borehole) it also weighs less. Can you figure out why? In orbit around the earth astronauts feel no weight at all, even though they are still as massive as they were on the ground. This is not due to the distance they are from the earth, which may be only 200 kilometers or so. They are weightless because they are in free fall, as you would be if you fell off a cliff. They don't fall straight down, however, because they are traveling forward at about 30 times the speed of sound (mach 30), and keep missing the earth! The sailors who refused to travel with Columbus were right. You can fall off the earth (if you are moving fast enough).
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