Mass and weight

Pupils often have trouble with understanding the difference between mass and weight.

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 do have scales rated in newtons.

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