Instead of starting with the concept of “ZERO GRAVITY” which is pretty mind-boggling if you try to grasp it*, start with the concept of “FREE FALL”.
Rate of freefall free#
How best to explain to a group of average school kids that ZERO GRAVITY does not exist and what space travellers experience is FREE FALL.įree fall seems a little hard for them to understand.
We really need a real physics-type guru to do a better explanation than my poor attempt here… I think this a good question, but be careful about sending them against “what everyone knows” without a lot of ammunition. Others will doubtless come in to correct me if I am wrong in this, no worries. It just gets to the point where we can’t measure it any more. I have read that gravity itself is pretty much like any other force–electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, etc., in that it tapers off and off and off but, like our atmosphere, doesn’t really ever stop. What they are talking about, though, to my poor understanding is what you (and I) call free fall, or microgravity. The condition of apparent weightlessness occurring when the centrifugal force on a body exactly counterbalances the gravitational attraction on it. Doing a Google search, I got a ton of definitions like this: Not because there is anything wrong with your question phrasing or assumptions, but because most of the definitions of zero gravity are actually about the appearance of zero gravity. You’re going to have a hard time doing this.
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