Is there a way of directly defining an objects mass? I can only thing of ways involving the measurement of the force that the mass exerts.
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Anonymous2009-04-25 19:11
Define the mass of a proton and an electron and count the number?
It'd be a shitty way to do it.
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Anonymous2009-04-26 15:18
You could ask the same question about any measurement.
How do you measure time?
H~ow do you measure gravitational field strength?
All we have is indirect ways of measuring these quantities, because what we think of as definite quantities are just ways of defining something in terms of some parameter weve invented ourselves.
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Anonymous2009-04-26 23:48
i always thought the measure of an object's mass was by definition the amount of gravitational force exerted by it.
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Anonymous2009-04-26 23:50
I think a good way to think of it as a measure of an object's resistance to motion, in other words, it's inertia.
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Anonymous2009-04-28 5:37
Measure the de broglie wavelength.
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Anonymous2009-04-30 22:59
Is there a way of directly defining mass?
Are you retarded? You have to be fucking retarded.
You don't make up a concept and then define it (e.g. let's define "mass"), you notice a property of the physical world and then name it (e.g. this rock has to be made of something, let's call it "mass").