Mass
property of matter to resist changes of the state of motion and to attract other bodies
Mass is an intrinsic physical quantity of a body which in modern physics is generally defined as the strength of an object's gravitational attraction to other bodies. The unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) is the kilogram (kg). Mass can also be understood as a measure of the energy content of a body (see E=mc²).
Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied.
In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less than it does on Earth because of the lower gravity, but it would still have the same mass. This is because weight is a force, while mass is the property that (along with gravity) determines the strength of this force.
In the Standard Model of physics, the mass of elementary particles is believed to be a result of their coupling with the Higgs boson in what is known as the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism.
Phenomena
There are several distinct phenomena that can be used to measure mass. Although some theorists have speculated that some of these phenomena could be independent of each other, current experiments have found no difference in results regardless of how it is measured:
Inertial mass measures an object's resistance to being accelerated by a force (represented by the relationship F = ma).
The public source identifies “Mass” as property of matter to resist changes of the state of motion and to attract other bodies. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mass, property and matter.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11423. The Library of Congress control number is sh85081853. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.