Back to the basics

Weight and mass are some of the most basic principles in physical science, but these terms are often confused by students and teachers alike. It's no wonder--in our everyday lives we use the terms interchangeably. We in the development team at EL can testify to several occasions when a mysterious Gizmo error was traced to a failure to convert a mass to a weight or vice versa.

The Weight and Mass Gizmo was designed to address the basic distinction between mass and weight. Students measure mass and weight in a variety of locations (Earth, the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter) to discover that while the mass of an object is constant, its weight will fluctuate depending on the strength of gravity.

Enjoy!