Mass

Mass is an intrinsic quality of objects. We have to distinguish this from the weight of an object, which is due to gravity. An astronaut floating in space thus has no weight, but still retains her mass at the same value as on the surface of the Earth. We will come back to this point in more detail when we discuss forces later.

The mass scale encompasses even more orders of magnitude than those for length or time:

Let's start with the biggest scale this time: the Universe consists of billions of galaxies and has a mass of about 10⁵¹ kg.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has roughly 100 billion stars, of which our own Sun is one of the smaller ones. The mass of our galaxy is estimated to be 2.7·10⁴¹ kg.
The mass of the Sun is 2.0·10³⁰ kg.
The mass of the Earth 6.0·10²⁴ kg, a factor of 300000 smaller than that of the Sun.
The mass of all water in all oceans on Earth is approximately 10¹⁴ kg
A typical mountain has a mass of 10¹⁰ kg.
A passenger plane's mass, like for example the Boeing 777, is about 300Ý000 kg.
Cars typically have a mass of about 1000 kg
A grown man's mass is usually between 70 and 80 kg.
A fly: 10^-4 kg.
The mass of a single cell in the human body is on the order of 10^-15 kg to 10^-14 kg.
A single lead atom had a mass of 3.4·10^-25 kg.
The proton mass is 1.67·10^-27 kg.
The electron mass is 9.1·10^-31 kg, a fraction of 1/2000 of that of the proton.