Question

Britany thought her backpack was too heavy. She decided to measure the mass of her backpack with her books and binder inside. Then she measured the mass of each individual thing that was inside her backpack. Finally, she found the mass of her empty backpack. She wrote all the masses in a table, shown below.

Mass of Backpack & Items Inside

Item Mass (in kilograms)
math book 3
science book 2
binder 1
empty backpack 1
full backpack 7

Looking at the table, she noticed that adding up all the masses of the items in the backpack equaled the total mass of the full backpack. What did this demonstrate about mass?
A.
The mass of a whole object is more than the sum of the masses of its parts.
B.
The mass of a whole object is less than the sum of the masses of its parts.
C.
The mass of a whole object is equal to the sum of the masses of its parts.
D.
The mass of a full backpack does not depend on what is in it.

Answer 1

The correct answer is option C. The mass of a whole object is equal to the sum of the masses of its parts.

Step-by-step explanation:

Britany's observations in measuring the mass of her full backpack and the masses of the individual items demonstrate a fundamental principle in physics, specifically relating to the concept of mass.

The fact that the mass of the full backpack is equal to the sum of the masses of the individual items inside it, plus the mass of the empty backpack itself, aligns with option C: The mass of a whole object is equal to the sum of the masses of its parts. This principle is because mass is a measure of the amount of matter an object contains, and simply combining objects does not change the total amount of matter.