Leaving Certificate Physics Practice Test

The weight of an object is

The force of air resistance on the object The force of Earth's gravity on the object The object's mass The object's velocity

Correct Answer:

The force of Earth's gravity on the object

Explanation:

Weight is the gravitational force acting on an object. On Earth, this force equals the object's mass times the acceleration due to gravity, W = m g, so it has units of newtons. This means weight reflects how strongly Earth's gravity pulls on the object, not how heavy the object feels in a particular environment. The mass is the amount of matter in the object, which remains the same anywhere, while weight changes with the strength of gravity. The other ideas describe different things: air resistance is drag from the air, velocity is how fast the object moves, and neither is the gravitational force acting on the object.

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