Re: Weight and Mass

[Simon Lorimer <slorimer@HOTMAIL.COM>]

It is interesting to read that all the Physicists on this list have trouble
reaching a consensus on these definitions.
My experience of the trouble with teaching this distinction is that the
students arrive with a well understood and often reinforced definition of
weight of their own. If you ask a student (or a non physics colleague) what
they weigh, they will invariably give you an answer in kilograms (or stone
or pounds, depending on where you come from).
When we teach them a physics definition for weight in terms of Newtons, are
we expecting this definition to displace the one they arrived with? I would
think that this is unlikely and that we have to teach our students to
accomodate both definitions, knowing that one is correct in the Physics lab
but the other is (however wrong we know it is) the accepted common usage of
the term outside the lab.
I can usually get a laugh by replacing the question 'how much do you
weigh?' with the more physically correct 'How massive are you?'.

Simon Lorimer
slorimer@hotmail.com


On Mon, 24 Sep 2001 19:24:36 -0400, John S. Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM> wrote:

> At 05:59 PM 9/24/01 -0500, cliff parker wrote:
> > Any ideas on how one could convince students that the resistance one feels
> > when pushing a car is largely because of inertia and not friction, short
of
> > repeating the experiment on the moon?
>
> Observe that it keeps going when you stop pushing.