Key Differences

Everything that surrounds us, such as air, food, water, plants, animals, vehicles, clothes and so forth is made up of matter. The matter is a collection of particles and is anything that has mass and occupies space. There are three fundamental states of matter, i.e. solid, liquid and gas. The states of matter take place due to the variations in the molecules of matter. The size and shape of a solid object is definite. Nevertheless, if we talk about the other two states of matter, that is … [Read more...]

Energy implies as the object's capability to perform work. It is something that cannot be created or destroyed but can only be transformed. An object loses its energy, when it performs work, whereas it gains energy when the work is performed on it. Energy is broadly classified as kinetic energy and potential energy. While kinetic energy is the energy which an object contains because of a particular motion. On the other hand, potential energy is the stored energy, because of its state of rest. … [Read more...]

While mass measures, how much matter is present in an object. Weight measures how strongly an object is pulled due to gravity. These two terms are often encountered by us in our day to day life. Whenever we discuss the weight of the body, we actually talk about its mass, but these two are not synonyms, in fact, these two are different notions. Due to the lack of knowledge people use the two interchangeably, which is incorrect, as mass is the fundamental property of matter whereas weight is … [Read more...]

Scalar quantity refers to the quantity, which has only magnitude and no direction. On the other hand, vector quantity implies the physical quantity which comprises of both magnitude and direction. Physics is a science based on mathematics. While studying physics, we go through a number of concepts and notions, which rely on mathematics. The mathematical quantities explaining the motion of a body are bifurcated into two groups, i.e. scalar quantity and vector quantity. For a layperson, the … [Read more...]

In physics, distance and displacement are used to indicate the length between two points. However, these two are not one and the same thing. While distance is the length of the actual path between two locations, displacement, on the other hand, is the length of the shortest path between two locations. So, the distance tells us, how much path is traveled by the body, during motion and the displacement gives us an idea of how far the body is from its starting point, and that too in which … [Read more...]

The concept of heat and temperature are studied together in science, which is somewhat related but not alike. The terms are very common, due to their wide usage in our day to day life. There exist a fine line which demarcates heat from temperature, in the sense that heat is thought of, as a form of energy, but the temperature is a measure of energy. The fundamental difference between heat and temperature is slight but significant, heat is the overall energy of the molecular motion, whereas … [Read more...]

Force and Pressure are the two important concepts of physics which are often erroneously interchanged by the people. But, these two are not same at all, as there is a vast difference between force and pressure, which you are going to understand only if you learn about them. Do you ever observe, what makes a football move? Or What makes a drawer open? This is because we apply force on the object. Force is nothing but the push or pull, which changes the state of motion or direction of the … [Read more...]

Have you ever wondered, why different objects travel the same distance, taking different amounts of time? This is because some objects are faster than others. You can calculate the rate of motion of a body, by determining the distance covered by an object in a given interval of time, i.e. speed. The term 'speed' is often misconstrued with the 'velocity', because of having similar applications. However, these two are very different concepts of motion, in physics. Velocity measures the distance … [Read more...]

The motion along a curved path is termed as circular motion, like the orbital motion of planets, ice skater, blades of the fan, gears, amusement park rides, etc. The two fundamental concepts which are studied in circular motion are rotation and revolution. While rotation means the movement in a circle round an axis, revolution is when an object moves in a circular path around another object or center. Many people often misinterpret these two concepts as they think that these two are same. But … [Read more...]