Mass and weight

Pupils often have trouble with understanding the difference between mass and weight. Mass is the amount of stuff, where as weight is the force that a mass expeiences due to the pull of gravity.This page lists (in no particular order) ideas for helping pupils who are having difficulties.

Travelling to the Moon

• Most pupils already know that the Moon has weaker gravity than the Earth.
• Remind pupils that they could work out the mass of the object by counting the number of atoms in the object.
• Ask pupils to imagine taking something "heavy" to the moon. The number of atoms doesn't change, so the mass doesn't change.

Newton Scales

• We have scales rated in newtons. They are currently stored in cupboard between S10 and S11.

Other

Here are some good ways of helping pupils understand the difference between mass and weight:

1. Method one
2. Method two
   1. Sub method of two
3. Method three