Which item is heavier, 50 kg of cotton or 50 kg of iron?

50 kg of iron will be heavier than 50 kg of cotton unless they are in a vacuum. weight = mass * gravity - weight of fluid displaced. The last part is because of Archimedes' Principle. There is no fluid displaced in a vacuum, so the weight is the same. The density of iron is 7870 kg/m^3. read more

50 kg of iron will be heavier than 50 kg of cotton unless they are in a vacuum. weight = mass * gravity - weight of fluid displaced. The last part is because of Archimedes’ Principle. There is no fluid displaced in a vacuum, so the weight is the same. The density of iron is 7870 kg/m^3. The volume of 50 kg of iron is approximately 0.006353240152478 m^3. read more

If you take both coot on and iron to the Moon, they both would be equally heavy because there is no atmosphere on the Moon. But on Earth 1kg iron would be heavier. read more

So both iron and cotton are having same amount of matter (1 kg) in it. Remember the air inside the cotton will not be taken into account as we are taking pure 1kg of cotton.If you are taking air then it will be more than 1 kg of cotton. So they will experience (1*9.81) N both in earth ground. So the answer of the question is they are same as weight though volume of 1 kg cotton is larger than 1kg of iron. read more