On Defining Weight and Weightlessness

• Eugene Hecht ^[1]
  1. [1] Eugene Hecht
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 6, 2024, págs. 429-434
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • For the last 50 years or so, physics educators have tried valiantly to deal with the complexities that exist regarding weight and weightlessness.1 When teaching any new physics concept, it is, of course, good pedagogy to simplify the discussion, exploring as few nuances as possible that would otherwise distract from the main theme. That well-meaning approach may have inadvertently contributed to the fact that no good definition of “weight” presently exists in the pedagogical or metrological literature, or anywhere else. The project here is to offer to the teaching community a definition of “weight” that can hold up under scrutiny and is still easily accessible to students.