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Re: [Phys-l] The History of MASS





|
| Thanks to all for the comments and suggested resources.
|
| The reason I asked the question is that, after many years of
| teaching Physics, that the idea of separating the concepts of
| weight and mass seems to be decidedly non trivial especially
| to thinkers who are trapped on the earth's surface. We seem
| to take it for granted today, especially in the space age,
| that the distinction is obvious but my question was simply to
| get at the mechanism for its development. What was it that
| lead to the need for this concept?
|


Even worse is the distinction between inertial mass and gravitational
mass concepts. The principle of equivalence makes it even harder to
recognize that these are two distinct concepts. Which is implied by the
worthiness of the Eotvos experiment and their progenies.

________________________
Joel Rauber
Department of Physics - SDSU

Joel.Rauber@sdstate.edu
605-688-4293