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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Physics Post 17


For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of pencils (and pens) in an arrangement on the ground. As you can see, the writing utensils spell out "Mass is not weight". As we have learned, mass is definitely not weight. Weight, is in fact, mass times gravity. So, if you accidentally told someone who took physics that you were 400 kilograms or 40 Newtons, they would think you are crazy. Another example where confusing mass and weight would be bad is when converting a weight on earth to a weight onthe moon. If you forget to convert your weight on earth back into mass, then it would be much heavier than it should be. To be exact, someone who has a mass of 45 kilograms would weigh approximately 440 Newtons on earth (earth's gravitational acceleration being 9.8 meters per second squared). And on the moon they would weigh about 73 Newtons (the moon's gravitational acceleration being 1.63 meters per second squared). But, if you forget that 440 is in Newtons not kilograms and you tried to convert it, the person would end up weighing about 717 Newtons, which is very heavy. Also, if they were a girl or sensitive guy, you would offend them. The moral of the story is: mass is not weight *insert heavy metal song here*.
>implying I own a lot of pens and pencils

1 comment:

  1. cool picture. Hope you learned a bunch and had fun while doing it.

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