GRAVITY FOR KIDS

I am sure gravity is the best toy of toddlers as they love dropping everything down and asking mom to pick it up.  Ask any child about gravity and the answer would be " it makes everything fall". If i ask you to jump,  you will land on your feet.  But why would you land? It is because of gravity.  It pulls everything towards the ground.

Gravity has not been understood by our scientist completely.  But in simple terms,  gravity is invisible attractive force that causes objects to move towards each other.

Imagine if there was no gravity on earth. Water, animals,  trees,  you, me,  everything will fly off in space.

The first scientist to study gravity is Sir Issac Newton about 300 years ago. There is famous story that once Newton was sitting under apple tree thinking and suddenly apple fell on his head.  But why not it went up or sideways why only down. It was this thought that  led Newton to discover the force that made it occur and he called it Gravity.  

He discovered :

- What goes up must come down.

- Which ever direction the object is thrown, up, down, left or right, it must come           down.

- Gravity works the same on all objects in absence of wind resistance.

- Gravity always pulls,  it never pushes.

Apart from the small scale examples like jumping, throwing and falling of an apple, gravity is also important on a larger scale.  How?

It is the sun's  gravity that keeps planets orbiting around it.  So sun's gravity acts as a glue that binds solar system.

Important  facts:

1) Ocean tides are caused by gravitational  pull of moon on the ocean.

2) Black holes have strongest gravitational  pull in the entire universe.

3) Along with discovering gravity,  Sir Issac Newton also gave three laws of motion.

4) Gravity has no duality, it only attracts,  never repels.

5) To leave earth's  gravitational  pull behind,  an object must travel 17 miles per second i.e. our planets escape velocity.

6) Moon has less gravity than the earth. This means that the object weighs less on moon than on earth. The moon's gravity is 1/6th of the earth's gravity.

7) Gravity is by far the weakest of four fundamental  forces.

I hope this concept of gravity is now very simple to understand.