gravitational mass
- noun
- /ˌɡrævɪˈteɪʃənl mæs/
- Specialized
:
masa gravitacional
- Thus, lunar ranging could test Einstein's assertion that the inertial and gravitational masses of a body are identical.
- inertial and gravitational mass
Why are inertial and gravitational mass the same thing?
- Why are inertial and gravitational mass the same thing?
Examples
-
This mass is what's called the gravitational mass, how much an object attracts other objects in the universe due to gravity.
-
Then there is gravitational mass that measures how much something interacts with the force of gravity.
-
Why are inertial and gravitational mass the same thing?
-
OK, the gravitational mass is generally somewhat less than the baryonic mass.
-
It might be that the ultimately correct modification of general relativity will have the gravitational self-energy making a positive contribution to gravitational mass.
Academic text (1999) -
If inertial mass is in reality an electromagnetic effect created by the zero-point field of the quantum vacuum, then, by the principle of equivalence, gravitational mass must have a similar origin.
Academic text (2000) -
A train weighs a lot near the Earth because it has a large gravitational mass that determines how much it attracts other objects.
-
An object's gravitational mass dictates the strength of its gravitational attraction to nearby bodies.
-
In physics, gravitational mass refers to how much force an object exerts due to gravity when in the presence of another mass.
Synonyms
190
4.1
The amount of matter in an object that makes it heavy and hard to move
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward adjectival modification: 'gravitational' (pertaining to gravity) qualifies 'mass' (amount of matter), so the meaning — the mass as it relates to gravity or the property determining gravitational attraction — is directly derivable from its parts. This is a compositional, scientific noun phrase following common grammatical patterns (adj + noun) and is therefore transparent to a learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Gravitational mass comes from the simple picture of how much an object 'pulls' or is pulled by gravity. The word mass means how much stuff is in the object and gravitational links that amount to the 'attraction' between objects, so the term means the quantity that decides how strongly an object is pulled by others.