Which would be more difficult to pull? Well, we really shouldn’t be treating these animals this way! Please do not pull elephants or mice!
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What is mass?
Would it be more difficult to pull an elephant or a mouse?
If you pulled each animal with the same amount of force, the elephant would respond less to pulling, even if he didn’t pull back at all. That’s because an elephant has more mass than a mouse.
Mass is the amount of material in an object. Mass stays the same no matter what force is acting on the object. This makes mass different from weight, which depends on both the amount of mass and the amount of gravity. This means that even though our elephant weighs less on the moon, his mass stays the same.
Last modified September 10, 2002 by Lisa Gardiner.
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