Good question! Both interesting and intriguing! Some of history’s greatest scientists have struggled to answer this question. The history alone is facinating. Well, enough preliminaries, let’s get right to the answer. If you don’t understand any of the words I am using ask your mom or dad to explain them. In science words are important and we have to use the right words so we can convey our meaning properly to others.

Gravity seems to be a basic property of the universe but nobody knows for sure what it is. Two of the most famous scientists in history Isaac Newton and Albert_Einstein became famous by trying to answer this question but they only had limited success. Note that even though their theories are flawed approximations, for most purposes they work extremely well because they seem to be excellent approximations to the reality and that is why both of them are famous.

Isaac Newton didn’t actually try to answer the question “What is gravity?”. He attempted to answer the simpler question “How does gravity work?” Using his imagination Newton visualized gravity as a force between all types of matter always trying to pull them together. Suppose you and a friend had a rope and you each held on to one end of the rope. Now start trying to pull each other. This is analogous to how gravity works. Note, if you try to push on the rope nothing happens. The rope just goes limp. Just like the rope gravity never pushes, it always pulls.

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Tags: Physics, Science

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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