the.com/lightness
the absence of weight you only notice once it lifts off you
means the quality of having little weight, or of being free from heaviness, whether physical, emotional, or in tone.
from From Old English 'liht' (not heavy) plus the noun-forming suffix '-ness'. 'Liht' traces back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with German 'leicht' and is a likely cousin of Latin 'levis' (light, of low weight) — the same family that gives us 'levity' and 'levitate'. Worth noting: the 'light' of brightness ('leoht' in Old English) is a separate word from a different root, though centuries of spelling collapsed them into the same five letters.
- physics
- photons are massless yet bend under gravity's pull
- perception
- white objects feel lighter than identical dark ones
- language
- the same word means weightless and not-serious
- medicine
- lightheadedness signals your brain wanting more blood
- literature
- Kundera called it unbearable, not liberating
carbon fiber — material used in boeing 787 that is 20% lighter than aluminum while maintaining strength
balsa wood — lightest commercial wood at 0.1-0.2 g/cm³, used in aircraft and surfboards
aerogel — synthetic porous material weighing 0.16 g/cm³, used by nasa in space missions