The Gravity On Different Planets!

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Published on September 17, 2020 1:00:03 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsuN_dJd2Is

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“I want to start a diet and lose some weight!”… This is a very common sentence that we hear all the time!
But have you ever wondered how your weight would change on another planet? For example, did you know that your weight on the Moon would be only… one sixth of your weight on the Earth?
And what about other planets? Watch this video and I will tell you!
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Before discovering how your weight would change on other planets, we have to talk about a very important concept in physics: the difference between mass and weight.
In fact, in normal life, we often use these two terms as they were the same thing. However, this is not correct.
When we say “my weight is 70 kilograms”, we are doing a mistake, at least from a scientific point of view. In fact, “70 kilograms” refers to our mass, not to our weight.
What is the difference between the two, then?
Let’s start by talking about mass. In simple words, mass is a quantity describing “the amount of matter” in a body. So, when we say for instance that a child has a mass of 20 kilograms, and a dog has a mass of 5 kilograms, we are just saying that the child “contains a greater amount of matter” than the dog.
One thing that should be clear is that the mass of a body is an “intrinsic property” of the body itself, so it doesn’t change if we change its location. This means that it doesn’t matter if we are on the Earth, or on the Moon, or on Mars: the mass of the child will always be 20 kilograms, and the mass of the dog will always be 5 kilograms. That’s because the amount of matter inside each of the two bodies does not change.
What about weight instead?
Weight, instead, is the direct effect of the force of gravity on a body. We all know that on the Earth, the force of gravity acts on all objects, attracting them towards the ground. The strength of this force, however, depends on the mass of the object. In fact, the larger the mass of a body, the stronger the force of gravity acting on it. To be more precise, the strength of the gravitational force on an object on the Earth is given by this simple formula:

And this , indeed, is what we call “weight”. Here, is the mass of the body: so you see that when the mass is larger, the weight is larger as well. But what about ?
is a special constant known as the “acceleration of gravity”. In simple words, this particular constant tells us “how strong” is gravity at a certain location. For example, on the surface of the Earth, the value of is approximately . In reality, this value is not exactly the same in all places in the world, since it slightly changes; however, we can neglect these small differences for the purpose of our discussion.
Ok, so: to get the weight of a body on the Earth, we just have to multiply its mass by this magic number, .
At this point, there should be a question in your mind. When you stand on a scale, the instrument is measuring “how strong” is your body pressing on the plate of the scale: but this depends on the force of gravity. So, the scale must be measuring your weight, not your mass… right?
The answer is: yes! However, why do we see a mass (for example: 70 kilograms) on the display then?
The reason is, the scale first measures your weight, but then it converts it into a mass. This can be done easily by looking again at our simple formula, . In fact, the scale “knows” the value of (which is on the Earth, as we said), so it is perfectly capable of calculating the value of our mass, , once it has measured our weight, .
Ok: after this short introduction about mass and weight, we are now able to broaden our view… and see what happens if we travel to space and to other planets!
Let’s imagine that an astronaut of 70 kilograms now jumps on a rocket and starts a journey to space. What happens to his weight?
First of all, let’s remind that his mass will never change during the journey: this is because the “amount of matter” that he has in his body is always the same.
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