Hello All,
Do me a favor. Stand up and jump as high as you can. Go ahead…do it. Now tell me what happened. Did you float away or did you come right back down? Hopefully you came right back down. Well that’s gravity for you. It’s the reason airliners need giant engines to push them towards the sky and why skydivers need parachutes to control their fall back down to the ground. What would happen if we didn’t have any gravity on Earth?
Well…let’s go to the Moon. Take a look at the image below and tell me what you see!
Yes…that’s right. It’s an Astronaut on the Moon. It looks like he is suspended in air but he really isn’t He is actually jumping. But the gravity pulls much less on the Moon. So when he jumps he appears to float. It would be like you jumping from one end of your classroom to the other. Gravity is less on the Moon than the Earth becuase the bigger the mass (Earth) the greater the pull of gravity. Since the Moon is smaller than the Earth gravity is less.
A few months ago I did something that made me realize how great a force gravity is. I went Skydiving at Lake Elsinore in Southern California. Skydiving has always been on my Bucket List and I figured this was the perfect time to go. Before I was able to jump I had to take a 5 hour class. Most first time jumpers go tandem (attached to someone else) but I wanted to jump alone. The thrill of jumping out of a plane at almost 13,000 feet and piloting my parachute back down to Earth was just too good to pass up. So please sit back and watch the video of my skydive below. What is gravity doing to me?
The Desert Files 