Gravity

Surely you’re familiar with the gravitas of gravity. I, for one, would like to think we’re all a little smarter than Newton, because we don’t need an apple falling on us (according to the myth) to observe the immediate affect of gravity.

            Gravity is one of the fundamental forces of the universe (the others being the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the electromagnetic force). What’s ironic about gravity is that it was the first of those four forces to be discovered, and compared to the other forces; we don’t really understand it.

            Fundamental forces came into existence shortly after the big bang. After the expansion of the universe, all matter was scatter throughout the universe, and the universe would have remained a void of gasses, were it not for gravity. Gravity exerts a force on two objects. You and the earth for instance, it is this force that keeps you from falling off the Earth. You and the computer you’re reading this on exert a gravitational force on each other, but it is so small that you’d barely notice. The same is true for all matter. Eventually gravity started to pull the early universe together. Several billion years later, those gasses that made up the early universe formed the stars and planets and whatnot.

Newton managed to quantify this phenomenon into the equation F=(G(m1m2))/(r^2) .I can’t use an equation writer in the blog. Meaning that the force gravity exerts on an object (F), is equal to the universal gravitational constant (G), times the two masses of said objects (m1 and 2), over the distance between them squared (r). That being said, I leave you with a tip that my high school physics teacher told our class. The day before our prom, when some of us were nervous (Ok, it was mainly I that was nervous), our teacher told us a way to appear more attractive to our respective dates. He said we should put weights in our pockets to increase our gravitational attractiveness. Mathematically, his logic was sound but I was skeptical as I entered prom with 20kg of metal in my pockets. But, on the whole, the night went fairly well. But I digress.