Question

The mass of a physical object is:

Answer 1

A physical object or physical body is a collection of matter within a defined contiguous boundary in three-dimensional space. The boundary should always be defined and identified by the properties of the material. The boundary may change over time.

Complete answer:
Mass is both a property of a physical body and a measure of its resistance to acceleration when a net force is applied. The mass of an object also helps to find out the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI unit of mass is the kg.

Often mass and weight are considered as synonymous terms but actually they both are two completely different terms with different meanings. Mass is simply defined as the measure of the amount of matter in a body. Weight is the measure of the amount of force acting on a mass due to acceleration due to gravity. Mass has only magnitude and hence, mass is a scalar quantity whereas weight has both magnitude and direction, so weight is a vector quantity.

A number of tools are present in the modern world to find out the mass in different environments. Some of these are balances and scales, measurement transducers and vibrating tube sensors.If we are given weight of an object and we need to find the mass of that object, then we will simply divide the weight of the object by acceleration due to gravity($g = 9.8\dfrac{m}{{{s^2}}}$ ).

Therefore, the final answer is that the mass of a physical object is the amount of matter in an object.

Note: The weight of an object varies from place to place but the mass of the object at all the places is the same. The weight of an object on the moon is about one-sixth of its weight on the earth whereas the mass of an object is the same on both earth and moon.