What is Mass?

The Simple Answer:

Some objects are more difficult to accelerate than others - A physics book resists accelerating more than a pencil, for instance. In other words, some objects have more inertia than others.

Mass measures inertia. The mass of an object tells you how much the object resists accelerating. In this sense, mass measures the quantity of matter in an object.

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last update November 23, 2007 by JL Stanbrough