AllTop Viral!

Have you thought about gravity today?

Sure, if the keys hit the floor causing you to also drop your coffee on the way out the door, the answer’s an easy one, but how much do you really know about this ever-present force in our lives?

Discover six things you might not have realized about gravity courtesy of Newswise.

1. Gravity is by far the weakest force we know.
Gravity only attracts—there’s no negative version of the force to push things apart. And while gravity is powerful enough to hold galaxies together, it is so weak that you overcome it every day. If you pick up a book, you’re counteracting the force of gravity from all of Earth…

2. Gravity and weight are not the same thing.
Astronauts on the space station float, and sometimes we lazily say they are in zero gravity. But that’s not true. The force of gravity on an astronaut is about 90 percent of the force they would experience on Earth. However, astronauts are weightless, since weight is the force the ground (or a chair or a bed or whatever) exerts back on them on Earth.

Take a bathroom scale onto an elevator in a big fancy hotel and stand on it while riding up and down, ignoring any skeptical looks you might receive. Your weight fluctuates, and you feel the elevator accelerating and decelerating, yet the gravitational force is the same…

Full story at Newswise.

Fun science facts.

Graphics credit: Canva