What is the difference between inertial mass and gravitational mass?

Question

What is the difference between inertial mass and gravitational mass?

Answer 1

Notwithstanding every effort by physisists and experimenters over the centuries to find a difference the conclusion up to now is that they are, within the limits of available measurement, the same.

Answer 2

Intertial mass is the property of an object that causes it to resist changing velocity when an external force F is applied. It's defined as F/A where A is acceleration.

Gravitational mass relates how strong a force an object experiences when subjected to a gravitational field g. It is F/g.

To within current experimental error, they appear to be equivalent.

Answer 3

1) Inertial mass. This is mainly defined by Newton's law, the all-too-famous F = ma, which states that when a force F is applied to an object, it will accelerate proportionally, and that constant of proportion is the mass of that object. In very concrete terms, to determine the inertial mass, you apply a force of F Newtons to an object, measure the acceleration in m/s2, and F/a will give you the inertial mass m in kilograms.

2) Gravitational mass. This is defined by the force of gravitation, which states that there is a gravitational force between any pair of objects, which is given by F = G m1 m2/r2

where G is the universal gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the two objects, and r is the distance between them. This, in effect defines the gravitational mass of an object.



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