• Question: How much does the Earth weigh?

    Asked by Hexenbiest to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 16 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: David Robertson

      David Robertson answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      About 6*10^24kg (that means 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000kg)
      The question of how to weigh it is not simple, but there is quite a good explanantion here:
      http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/planet-earth-weigh.htm
      A mountain in Scotland was used by the astonomer Maskelyne to weight the earth. The gravitational attraction of the mountain pulled a pendulum slightly away from vertical and he used this to get the weight of the earth. There are more details on this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiehallion_experiment

    • Photo: Sian Thomas

      Sian Thomas answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      Well done David – nothing to add!

    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      Just to add to David’s excellent answer: The value of 6 x 1o^24 also includes the earth’s atmosphere (but not the moon!).

      Interesting fact for you: Earth mass is a standard unit of mass in astronomy (Me) and they use it to work out masses of other planets. For e.g. Moon is 0.012 Me, Mars is 0.107 Me and Jupiter is 317.8 Me!

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