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Asked by moles to Andrew, Jade, Jessica, Kevin, Lynn on 19 Jun 2015.
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Jess Wade answered on 19 Jun 2015:
gravity is a very powerful force. It keeps us stuck to the ground, makes sure australians don’t fly away and also keeps the planets going around the sun. it’s the force of attraction between any two objects. As long as the objects have some ‘mass’ (they weigh something) there is gravity. It is a bit like a magnet and it pulls the things towards each other. Earth’s so big it has a lot of gravity, so everything on it- the trees, the apples, the humans, the ocean) is attracted to it and sticks. The planets and moons and sun have gravity. Gravity is effected by the size of the object, so Earth has more gravity than a pebble. We’re still trying to work out what carries the gravitational forces. Maybe when you come to university to study science you will find out the answer!
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Andrew Fensham-Smith answered on 19 Jun 2015:
The thing about gravity is that although to you and me it might seem like an incredibly powerful force – it is actually very weak! You can imagine a small magnet picking up a piece of metal off the ground – that magnet with its tiny magnetic field is actually defeating the entire gravitational field of the entirety of planet earth. Isn’t that cool!
Gravity acts in a way similarly to electric, magnetic and the nuclear forces that we don’t see very often. Gravity is weak, but acts over very large distances – entire galaxies sometimes. Compare this to electric and magnetic which might act over a few miles, and the nuclear forces only act over teeny tiny distances – billionths of centimeter.
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