The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #82811   Message #1520561
Posted By: Amos
12-Jul-05 - 12:24 PM
Thread Name: BS: Free falling
Subject: RE: BS: Free falling
In fact, now that we are planting robots on Mars, they will need to be able to calculate using any given g value depending on the planet they are deploying on.

For your entertainment, the percentage of your weight as it reads at sea-level on Earth, as it would appear using the same scale on other planets:

Mercury 37.8%
Venus    90.7%
Moon    16.6%
Mars    37.7%
Jupiter 253.3%
Saturn   106.4%
URanus    88.9%
NEptune   112.5%
Pluto    6.7%
Io (moon of Jupiter) 18.35%
Europa ( " "       ) 13.35%
Ganymede ( "   " ) 14.48%
Callisto ( " " ) 12.64%

SOL 2707.2%

Basics:

We often use the terms "mass" and "weight" interchangeably in our daily speech, but to an astronomer or a physicist they are completely different things. The mass of a body is a measure of how much matter it contains. An object with mass has a quality called inertia. If you shake an object like a stone in your hand, you would notice that it takes a push to get it moving, and another push to stop it again. If the stone is at rest, it wants to remain at rest. Once you've got it moving, it wants to stay moving. This quality or "sluggishness" of matter is its inertia. Mass is a measure of how much inertia an object displays.

Weight is an entirely different thing. Every object in the universe with mass attracts every other object with mass. The amount of attraction depends on the size of the masses and how far apart they are. For everyday-sized objects, this gravitational pull is vanishingly small, but the pull between a very large object, like the Earth, and another object, like you, can be easily measured. How? All you have to do is stand on a scale. Scales measure the force of attraction between you and the Earth. This force of attraction between you and the Earth (or any other planet) is called your weight. Weight is proportional to mass, but not the same thing.

Amos