Mass | Definition, Units, & Facts (2024)

mass, in physics, quantitative measure of inertia, a fundamental property of all matter. It is, in effect, the resistance that a body of matter offers to a change in its speed or position upon the application of a force. The greater the mass of a body, the smaller the change produced by an applied force. The unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) is the kilogram, which is defined in terms of Planck’s constant, which is defined as equal to 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ joule second. One joule is equal to one kilogram times metre squared per second squared. With the second and the metre already defined in terms of other physical constants, the kilogram is determined by accurate measurements of Planck’s constant. (Until 2019 the kilogram was defined by a platinum-iridium cylinder called the International Prototype Kilogram kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, France.) In the English system of measurement, the unit of mass is the slug, a mass whose weight at sea level is 32.17 pounds.

Weight, though related to mass, nonetheless differs from the latter. Weight essentially constitutes the force exerted on matter by the gravitational attraction of Earth, and so it varies slightly from place to place. In contrast, mass remains constant regardless of its location under ordinary circ*mstances. A satellite launched into space, for example, weighs increasingly less the farther it travels away from Earth. Its mass, however, stays the same.

According to the principle of conservation of mass, the mass of an object or collection of objects never changes, no matter how the constituent parts rearrange themselves. If a body split into pieces, the mass divides with the pieces, so that the sum of the masses of the individual pieces is equal to the original mass. Or, if particles are joined together, the mass of the composite is equal to the sum of the masses of the constituent particles. However, this principle is not always correct.

With the advent of the special theory of relativity by Einstein in 1905, the notion of mass underwent a radical revision. Mass lost its absoluteness. The mass of an object was seen to be equivalent to energy, to be interconvertible with energy, and to increase significantly at exceedingly high speeds near that of light (about 3 × 10⁸ metres per second, or 186,000 miles per second). The total energy of an object was understood to comprise its rest mass as well as its increase of mass caused by high speed. The rest mass of an atomic nucleus was discovered to be measurably smaller than the sum of the rest masses of its constituent neutrons and protons. Mass was no longer considered constant, or unchangeable. In both chemical and nuclear reactions, some conversion between mass and energy occurs, so that the products generally have smaller or greater mass than the reactants. The difference in mass is so slight for ordinary chemical reactions that mass conservation may be invoked as a practical principle for predicting the mass of products. Mass conservation is invalid, however, for the behaviour of masses actively involved in nuclear reactors, in particle accelerators, and in the thermonuclear reactions in the Sun and stars. The new conservation principle is the conservation of mass-energy. See also energy, conservation of; energy; Einstein’s mass-energy relation.