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Re: What is Weight?



Gang:

I am not sure what I ought to do, but I can tell you what
I do. I tell the students that the spaceship and the
astronaut are both freely falling bodies. I tell them that
both are falling in the global gravitation field. Then I
explain that two freely falling bodies have no relative
acceleration and therefore the astronaut experiences no
acceleration with respect to the ship. WBN
P.S. I guess this leaves out weight altogether.
Barlow Newbolt
Department of Physics and Engineering
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450

Young man if I could remember the names of all of
these particles I would have become a botanist
Enrico Fermi
Telephone and Phone Mail: 540-463-8881
Fax: 540-463-8884
e-mail: NewboltW@madison.acad.wlu.edu