Question

A student is given a spring balance that has a scale in newtons. The student is told that the acceleration of free-fall is 10 m/s2. (i) Describe how the student could find the mass of an irregular solid object.

Answer 1

Explanations & Calculations

• Acceleration of free fall is known as the gravity of that particular area.
• The product of that acceleration & the mass of a given object gives the weight of that object relative to that area.
• When a measurement is obtained using that spring balance, it's the weight of that object being measured.

$\qquad\qquad \begin{aligned} \small \text{Weight (N)} &= \small \text{Mass(kg)} \times \text{F.f.acceleration}(ms^{-2})\\ \small \therefore \text{Mass} &= \small \frac{\text{Weight}}{\text{Free fall Acceleration}} \end{aligned}$

• Student can measure the weight of that object by hanging it to the spring balance by means of a string. (weight of the string used should be negligible compared to that of the object)
• Then mass is calculated by the above relationship.

• Or to be more accurate, the weight of the string used could be measured first.(W_string).
• Then get the total weight (W_{total =} W_string + W_object).
• Then W_object could be calculated & followed the other steps.