Comment on Higgs Field
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 3 months agoI was assuming that the image was confusing the term “weight” with “mass” (as both are equal on earth — give or take the variance in Earth’s gravitational field)). If weight was intended to be a separate term, then it’s just incorrect. Weight is the term given to the force that objects in a gravitational field impart on others when they are not accelerating (I mean not accelerating to mean the object is still with reference to the surface of the Earth) [1.1]. In SI, weight is measured in Newton’s [1.2] and mass is measured in kilograms [2].
References
1. “Weight”. Wikipedia. Accessed: 2024-08-13T03:05Z. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight 1. > the weight of an object, is the force acting on the object due to acceleration of gravity. 2. > The unit of measurement for weight is that of force, which in the International System of Units (SI) is the newton. 2. “Mass”. Wikipedia. Accessed: 2024-08-13T03:08Z. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass > The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
I don’t actually know what the higgs field is. I assumed it was gravity.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
These terms get a little convoluted for me as my knowledge of them is far from well established. I don’t really want to get into what the actual “Higgs field” is, but, for the sake of the meme, the following excerpt from Wikipedia should suffice:
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
Oh so it’s all of it. Got it.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 months ago
To make it as simple as possible, Higgs makes it hard to push something. Gravity makes it hard to lift something.
So there are actually two types of mass. One is called inertial mass (what we feel due to the Higgs mechanism) and the other is called gravitational mass (what we feel due to gravitational attraction between two masses). They are usually the same so the distinction is usually ignored.