Visiting or Moving to the Moon Forces You to become a Student Of Physics.

After your arrival to Seleneca you might wish you had paid closer attention to your high school physics teacher, because you are about to go back to school.  The distinction between terms like weight, mass, acceleration, inertia, etc will become more apparent as you adapt to life here.  At first you will feel as though you are living inside some crazy science project. Here is a cheat sheet to get ready:

1. Your instant weight reduction. With 17% gravity, if you weigh 90kg (200lbs.) you now weigh 15.3kg (34lbs.)
2. We often think of Mass and Weight to be the same, but they are not. The mass of an object is defined as a magnitude not a scalable quantity, and it remains constant everywhere in the universe.  The formula for your weight:  Weight = Mass x Gravity (a force).  So on Earth, since Gravity = 1, your mass, normally measured in kilograms (grams for smaller objects), is the same number as your weight measured in kilograms. But on the moon?  Here, your weight is lower, but your mass is the same, and this will affect how your brain tells you to stop moving through space.  This is explained in #3 below.
3. Velocity, Inertia, and Gravity: When you are walking, your body has inertia. Following Newton’s laws of motion, that means your body wants to stay in motion until another forces acts upon it, like the force caused when your brain tells your feet to stop moving. With the force of gravity, it also helps slow you down because it is constantly pulling down on your body.  How fast you are moving is measured as your velocity and the force of your movement is measured with your velocity times your mass. Now, your body’s center of gravity is not located at your feet, it is in your midsection.  This means that when your feet stop, your midsection will try to keep going.  When your brain is telling your legs to stop moving, it thinks it knows how much time is needed based on its experience on Earth.  With less gravity on the Moon and more practice over time, your brain will eventually become reconditioned to the new environment.
4. Once adjusted to walking here, you will have gotten your “lunar legs,” as it is called by the locals. This is often a time of celebration when noticed by your friends and family, who have been until then trying to catch you as you fall or trip. One good thing about falling on to the floor on the moon, is that you are able to “fall gracefully” since you have more time to react after realizing that you just reached the point of no return. And you are less likely to get hurt.
5. Some of the recently arrived often use weighted shoes or clothing, kind of like training wheels on a bike, for their transition.  These are easy to find in local stores catering to visitors who do not know any better.  The weighed shoes do okay, but the weighted clothes become problematic.  They are fine if you are milling about your home or workplace, but remember that when you are walking, the weights sewn into the garments add mass to your upper body.  Using our formulas above, your inertia when in motion will have a stronger force making it even harder for you to stop on a dime, as they say.