The dough scooped out phenomenon

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  • angeldaae
    angeldaae Posts: 348 Member
    If you ate the bagel on the moon, where the gravity is one-sixth that of Earth, therein rending the bagel at one-sixth its Earthly weight, how would you count said bagel?

    A three-ounce bagel would be weighed at only half an ounce. But can you track it as such?

    :huh:
  • treetop57
    treetop57 Posts: 1,578 Member
    Exactly my point!
  • treetop57
    treetop57 Posts: 1,578 Member
    Actually, the specific heat of foods are given in calories/gram. The gram is a measure of mass, not weight. A bagel has the same mass on the moon as it does in Manhattan, even though the weight of the bagel is only 1/6. Since most of our lives, we are on the surface of the earth and the acceleration due to gravity is essential constant, we use mass and weight interchangeably. But they are different physical quantities, as your moon example illustrates.

    Think of the poor calorie-counting astronaut on the International Space Station. Because everything is in free fall, the food scale will measure zero, no matter the mass of the scooped out bagel. The bagel has the same mass, the same specific heat, and the same number of calories, but apparently weighs nothing.

    Of course, the astronaut's apparent weight is zero as well!

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