In everyday usage, the
mass of an object is often referred to as its
weight, though these are in fact different concepts and quantities. In scientific contexts, mass refers loosely to the amount of "
matter" in an object (though "matter" may be difficult to define), whereas weight refers to the
force experienced by an object due to
gravity. In other words, an object with a mass of 1.0 kilogram will weigh approximately 9.81 newtons (
newton is the unit of force, while
kilogram is the unit of mass) on the surface of the
Earth (its mass multiplied by the
gravitational field strength). Its weight will be less on
Mars (where gravity is weaker), more on
Saturn, and negligible in space when far from any significant source of gravity, but it will always have the same mass.