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In scientific contexts, mass is the amount of "matter" in an object (though "matter" may be difficult to define), but weight is the force exerted on an object's matter by gravity. [1] At the Earth 's surface, an object whose mass is exactly one kilogram weighs approximately 9.81 newtons , the product of its mass and the gravitational field ...
Inertia is the natural tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to stay at rest, unless a force causes the velocity to change. It is one of the fundamental principles in classical physics, and described by Isaac Newton in his first law of motion (also known as The Principle of Inertia). [1]
If a first body of mass m A is placed at a distance r (center of mass to center of mass) from a second body of mass m B, each body is subject to an attractive force F g = Gm A m B /r 2, where G = 6.67 × 10 −11 N⋅kg −2 ⋅m 2 is the "universal gravitational constant". This is sometimes referred to as gravitational mass.
The term is due to the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was the first to attempt a mathematical formulation from 1676 to 1689. Leibniz noticed that in many mechanical systems (of several masses , m i each with velocity v i ) the quantity [ 4 ]
The SI unit of force is the newton (symbol N), which is the force required to accelerate a one kilogram mass at a rate of one meter per second squared, or kg·m·s −2.The corresponding CGS unit is the dyne, the force required to accelerate a one gram mass by one centimeter per second squared, or g·cm·s −2. A newton is thus equal to ...
Another difference is that matter has an "opposite" called antimatter, but mass has no opposite—there is no such thing as "anti-mass" or negative mass, so far as is known, although scientists do discuss the concept. Antimatter has the same (i.e. positive) mass property as its normal matter counterpart.
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The slug is defined as the amount of mass that accelerates at 1 ft/s 2 when one pound-force is exerted on it, and is equivalent to about 32.2 pounds (mass). The kilogram-force is a non-SI unit of force, defined as the force exerted by a one-kilogram mass in standard Earth gravity (equal to 9.80665 newtons exactly).