Difference between matter and mass

[xarita]

please ...I need to explain to my daughter the difference between matter and mass...no definitions...an analogy will be good..:)

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Mass is an essential quality of matter, so the two are very related. Perhaps a good analogy is to food and calories. All food has calories like all mater has mass. Like mass, the amount of calories a food has depends on the type and quantity of food.

 

[rollcast]

Or you could describe it being like currency, you get different values of currency, you have a variety or values of coins and notes.

Then the quantity of these determines how much money you actually have

 

[Ryan_m_b]

An important piece of information for us to know is how old is your daughter? The answers you may get would be very different if she turned out to be 6 compared to 16 for example.

 

[pmacias]

Sure, I would be happy to help explain the difference between matter and mass to your daughter. Think of matter as a group of people, and mass as the total number of people in that group. Just like how a group can be made up of different types of people, matter is made up of different types of particles such as atoms and molecules. And just like how the size of a group can vary, the amount of matter in an object can also vary. Mass is simply a measurement of how much matter is in an object. So, just like how a group can have a larger or smaller number of people, an object can have a larger or smaller mass depending on how much matter it contains. Does that make sense?