section_path: Phenomena
section_name: Phenomena
paragraph_text: Phenomena
  
  There are several distinct phenomena that can be used to measure mass. Although some theorists have speculated that some of these phenomena could be independent of each other, current experiments have found no difference in results regardless of how it is measured:
  
  The mass of an object determines its acceleration in the presence of an applied force. The inertia and the inertial mass describe this property of physical bodies at the qualitative and quantitative level respectively. According to Newton's second law of motion, if a body of fixed mass m is subjected to a single force F, its acceleration a is given by F / m. A body's mass also determines the degree to which it generates and is affected by a gravitational field. If a first body of mass m is placed at a distance r (center of mass to center of mass) from a second body of mass m, each body is subject to an attractive force F = Gm m / r, where G = 6.67 × 10 N⋅kg ⋅m is the "universal gravitational constant ". This is sometimes referred to as gravitational mass. Repeated experiments since the 17th century have demonstrated that inertial and gravitational mass are identical; since 1915, this observation has been incorporated a priori in the equivalence principle of general relativity.