Which is heavier, a pound of feathers, or a pound of gold?

I've been told that a pound of feathers is heavier, because gold is commonly weighed by a weight system where a pound is 12 ounces, not 16. I have no idea if this true or not!

Someone told me that worked with "ton of gold or ton of feathers" as well. That there is the metric ton and the standard ton.

A pound is a pound ,a ton is a ton,all that gliters is not gold,so that's a feather in your cap, they weigh the same.

Well depends if you have the scale on the moon or on earth. Archimedes' law works for gasses as well as for liquids...

I think the centre of gravity for the feathers is further from the centre of the mass of the earth, so it needs to have more mass to weigh the same as the gold.

/Tomas

If a feather weighs a gram and a piece of gold weighs 1000 grams then surely,1000 feathers and the gold would be the same weight.If you stand on a set of scales and you weight is 80 kilo,s,if you raise one leg off the scales are you saying your weight will be different?

But weight does vary with distance from the center of gravity. If you weigh 80 kilos, and then move the scale up into orbit, you would weigh less and die from the cold and lack of atmosphere.

But I think the question implies "pound" as a measure of force (weight in this case), not of mass.

I don,t disagree with what you say,cause I didn,t know no different,but one thing makes sense,if you were to weigh a pound of feathers,there would be air gaps between the feathers, and so air would have a weight even though it would be small,so that would also put the measurement out.

Actually, Mike, a "pound" may not be a "pound" after all. Gold is measured 12 troy ounces to the *troy* pound, 373.24 grams mass, while feathers are measured by "Avoirdupois pounds." One Avoirdupois pound of feathers is 1.2152 times as heavy as one Troy pound of gold. Actually I don't really much about it, but searched the subject on Google.

Paul

Air in the feathers makes no difference. That is just part of the atmostpheric pressure. If you push the air our of the feathers, it sits on top of them instead.

Maybe you could weigh the feathers with the troy weights as well,,,,,,,ok so what,s the answer,,,,,,,,maybe someone will say that 1+1 don,t add up to 2,but hey that's another story.We certainly have some clever people on our site.

I apologized if I ruffled any feathers (please pardon the pun, but I couldn't resist it), but I was just repeating the standard answer to an old chestnut. I do recognize your point. Maybe I haven't entered into the intended spirit of this site. Maybe these questions are meant to puzzled and pondered over, not merely answered with a stock reply. I do wonder what's Scott's intended answer was or maybe he posted it as a philosophical query.