Which has more mass quartz or pyrite?

Answer 1

There's no way to answer your question. More accurately, there is no way to answer your question without sounding like a smart-ass. We can't tell which has more mass unless we know how much of each you have to begin with! If you've got a pound of quartz and 10 pounds of pyrite, the pyrite is more massive, because objects with greater mass have greater weight. If you've got only an ounce of pyrite, your one-pound sample of quartz is more massive. Here's a question for you: What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of rocks? Many people who answer too quickly say, "Rocks." And they'd be wrong. Since both weigh a pound, they have the same weight and, therefore, have the same mass. In other words, they both contain the same amount of matter. Perhaps what you meant to ask is What has the greater density? Density is mass per unit volume. So, if you had, say, a cubic foot of quartz and a cubic foot of pyrite, then you could ask Which is more massive? or Which has greater mass? That would be a question we could answer definitively. Quartz has a density of about 2.65 grams per cubic centimeter. Pyrite's density is about 4.9 g/cc. So a cubic centimeter of pyrite is more massive than a cc of quartz.