Gravity

Next time you throw a ball in the air, and it doesn't fly off into outer space, thank gravity. Right now, you and everything in the room where you are, is getting pulled down by gravity. If you don't believe it, push a book of your desk. It will go plummeting toward the center of the Earth. It's gravity. The Earth's mass, the stuff it's made of, creates gravity. It's pulling down on you and every other object you can see; it's even pulling down on the air and the ocean. Not only that, you and every atom of every thing around you has gravity. So, the objects and atoms are all, ever so slightly, pulling up on the Earth! Without gravity, there would be no weight. When you step on a bathroom scale, the scale is getting squeezed between you and the Earth. The scale measures how strong this mutual attraction is. Gravity makes a force that pulls objects together. Not only is gravity pulling on every atom and molecule of everything around us, it pulls over huge, gigantic di

Aired: 1993-10-15