- #1
IkeB777
- 15
- 0
This is my first post to this forum, and it just so happens that what is on my mind right now is how the language and images that we use to describe our world, and teach others is a bit broken.
I am not a scientist, but I've always been interested in it, and my interest over the years has only increased. Probably as we've learned more about the universe and the world, and media has propagated the discoveries, I've become more learned. I know about just enough right now to be a danger to myself and others, but here's my contribution to science as it is relative to how we communicate it to each other.
First, the word 'space' is a word that I think should just be thrown out the airlock. If I were to define space, it would be an area completely devoid of all energy. Space carries a connotation of emptiness and nothingness which space is absolutely not. If we continue to throw this word at our kids, with it's multitude of uses and meanings, we're doing the future a disservice.
I take exception to the term 'gravity well'. This is just trivial semantics, but this is how the term messed me up. I considered a gravity well analogous to a regular water well, just for the sake of visualization, and compared it to the gravity 'well' of the Earth. I deduced that the pressure at the bottom of the well would be greatest, so then the pressure at the center of the Earth, or the 'bottom' of the well should also be greatest. But then I considered that the center of the Earth could not be the bottom of the Earth's gravity well because at the center of the Earth you would be 'weightless'. So then I figured then to make the analogy work, the SURFACE of the Earth had to be the bottom of the gravity well, because as you moved toward the center, gravity would decrease (actually just start acting in the other direction as you passed through more of the Earth's mass). The pressure at the bottom of a well is greatest, but for Earth to have a gravity 'well' that would suggest that there would have to be another 'source' of gravity in order for it to be like a 'well'. I still can't wrap my head around weightlessness at the center of the Earth, because you really would have negative weight, and that doesn't seem right either. Well, I played this head game with myself for about an hour and decided that either the analogy was just a bad analogy, or that the analogy was a good analogy, and we were looking at gravity backwards. Of course, it's just a bad analogy. Unless you're heavier at the center of the earth, then it's a good analogy. Yeah bad analogy.
Next, I really hate that diagram/animation attempting to describe visually how gravity works by putting the Earth on a black trampoline with blue gridlines, and then a moon spinning around it on the concave created by the Earth, like that silly toy designed to make your kids ask you for all your change. It may seem helpful, but if you show people who don't know any better, which is most of the world, they are going to continue to think that gravity works in a 2 dimensional way. We already have the disadvantage of having lived in a 2 dimensional gravitational field, and our minds are conditioned to think about gravity in a 2 dimensional way. Gravity needs to be visualized and practiced in a 3 dimensional way, as it actually acts, rather than the way we have perceived it since the beginning.
Also, and I'm going to catch flak for this, I think the word constant needs to be preceded by another word like 'practical', or 'scalar'. This is because I just don't think there are any true constants. It doesn't seem possible in my mind. That's probably just due to my inexperience, but I think I have a good reason to believe nothing's truly constant.
I also predict that real soon, we won't even have a use for the word 'gravity'.
I am not a scientist, but I've always been interested in it, and my interest over the years has only increased. Probably as we've learned more about the universe and the world, and media has propagated the discoveries, I've become more learned. I know about just enough right now to be a danger to myself and others, but here's my contribution to science as it is relative to how we communicate it to each other.
First, the word 'space' is a word that I think should just be thrown out the airlock. If I were to define space, it would be an area completely devoid of all energy. Space carries a connotation of emptiness and nothingness which space is absolutely not. If we continue to throw this word at our kids, with it's multitude of uses and meanings, we're doing the future a disservice.
I take exception to the term 'gravity well'. This is just trivial semantics, but this is how the term messed me up. I considered a gravity well analogous to a regular water well, just for the sake of visualization, and compared it to the gravity 'well' of the Earth. I deduced that the pressure at the bottom of the well would be greatest, so then the pressure at the center of the Earth, or the 'bottom' of the well should also be greatest. But then I considered that the center of the Earth could not be the bottom of the Earth's gravity well because at the center of the Earth you would be 'weightless'. So then I figured then to make the analogy work, the SURFACE of the Earth had to be the bottom of the gravity well, because as you moved toward the center, gravity would decrease (actually just start acting in the other direction as you passed through more of the Earth's mass). The pressure at the bottom of a well is greatest, but for Earth to have a gravity 'well' that would suggest that there would have to be another 'source' of gravity in order for it to be like a 'well'. I still can't wrap my head around weightlessness at the center of the Earth, because you really would have negative weight, and that doesn't seem right either. Well, I played this head game with myself for about an hour and decided that either the analogy was just a bad analogy, or that the analogy was a good analogy, and we were looking at gravity backwards. Of course, it's just a bad analogy. Unless you're heavier at the center of the earth, then it's a good analogy. Yeah bad analogy.
Next, I really hate that diagram/animation attempting to describe visually how gravity works by putting the Earth on a black trampoline with blue gridlines, and then a moon spinning around it on the concave created by the Earth, like that silly toy designed to make your kids ask you for all your change. It may seem helpful, but if you show people who don't know any better, which is most of the world, they are going to continue to think that gravity works in a 2 dimensional way. We already have the disadvantage of having lived in a 2 dimensional gravitational field, and our minds are conditioned to think about gravity in a 2 dimensional way. Gravity needs to be visualized and practiced in a 3 dimensional way, as it actually acts, rather than the way we have perceived it since the beginning.
Also, and I'm going to catch flak for this, I think the word constant needs to be preceded by another word like 'practical', or 'scalar'. This is because I just don't think there are any true constants. It doesn't seem possible in my mind. That's probably just due to my inexperience, but I think I have a good reason to believe nothing's truly constant.
I also predict that real soon, we won't even have a use for the word 'gravity'.