Question

On what factor/ factors does the weight of a body depend?

Answer 1

The weight of an item is defined as the force exerted on it by gravity in science and engineering. The gravitational force exerted on the item is defined as a vector quantity in certain mainstream textbooks. Others describe weight as a scalar quantity, the gravitational force's magnitude. Others describe it as the size of the response force applied to a body by devices that counteract gravity's effects: the weight is the quantity measured by a spring scale, for example.

Complete answer:
Newton's theories of motion and the formulation of Newton's law of universal gravitation resulted in a significant expansion of the idea of weight. Weight and mass were fundamentally separated. Weight became associated with the force of gravity on an item and therefore reliant on the context of the object, whereas mass became associated with the basic quality of things linked to their inertia.

Newton, in particular, regarded weight to be related to another object that causes gravitational force, such as the Earth's weight in relation to the Sun. Weight and mass are fundamentally distinct concepts in current scientific usage: mass is an intrinsic feature of matter, whereas weight is a force that comes from gravity's effect on matter: it quantifies how strongly gravity pulls on that stuff. In most practical everyday circumstances, however, the term "weight" is employed instead of "mass."

Because the intensity of gravity does not change greatly on the Earth's surface, the distinction between mass and weight is irrelevant for many practical applications. The gravitational force exerted on an item (its weight) is exactly proportional to its mass in a homogeneous gravitational field.

Note: The gravitational field of the Earth is not uniform, and it may vary by as much as 0.5 percent depending on where you are on the planet (see Earth's gravity). These differences change the connection between weight and mass, and they must be taken into consideration when doing high-precision weight measurements that are meant to indirectly estimate mass. To be lawful for commerce, spring scales that measure local weight must be calibrated in the place where the objects will be used to show this standard weight.