Gravity

When you say the word gravity, most people would think of it as a force that keeps us and all objects grounded. Some would say gravity is why planets orbits the Sun. While this is all correct, most of us have fundamentally understood gravity wrong. Gravity is not some magic force, and believe it or not, even we have a gravitational force that attracts the Earth towards us. Let’s do a small experiment. You will need another person for this. This is what you will need; a t-shirt, two objects of different masses (preferably round objects). You and your partner should hold the t-shirt flat in the air, but hold it very loose. Place the heavier object in the middle of the t-shirt; you should see the t-shirt bend down so the t-shirt is forming a wide U. Now place the smaller object anywhere on the t-shirt. What do you see? The smaller object goes towards the bigger object. That is gravity in its simplest form. Now, your question may be, if this is how gravity works, then how come the Earth never falls into the sun? This is where two balls may come in handy. Once you have the bigger ball in the middle, push the smaller ball around the bigger ball; make sure it is at a reasonable distance. What you will notice is that the smaller ball ‘orbits’ the bigger ball. It eventually stops, but the speed of which the Earth is moving and the inertia – the unwilling to change from rest or motion to the other – keeps it in orbit for a long time (we don’t know if it will orbit forever). So if the Earth slows down, it will plummet into the Sun. Let’s go back to my 3rd sentence. I mentioned that we have gravitational forces that attract other objects. How is that? Well, in the same experiment, imagine you as one of the objects. Aren’t you attracting the Earth? The reason the change isn’t visible is because of the ratios of the masses of us. Earth is 853 followed by 21 zeroes more heavier than the average human. Imagine a bowling ball and a marble in that t-shirt scenario. The marble will obviously go towards the bowling ball, but you can’t see the bowling ball going towards the marble, but in reality, it actually is; it’s just not significant enough.

Any object that has mass has a gravitational force.