From what I understand, air gets thinner the further up you go. This I assume is because Earth’s gravity pulls all the heaviest particles down to its centre. I’m wondering about gravity itself though, is there a gradual shift in the strength of gravity as there is in the consistency of the air, or does gravity apply to the whole field surrounding the Earth up to the very perimeter and then quickly fall off?
In: 9
I think that to you the concept of a field is not very clear, and all the previous answers fail to address this point.
A (Vector) field is a “thing” that associates a vector to every point in space (the maths and the precise descriptions are beyond the eli5 scope)
To go a bit more in depth, imagine dividing the whole space in a grid and in each little square you write how strong the gravitational would be if you place an object there.
So the gravitational field is an handy concept to describe the pull in every point, the further away you go from earth the weaker the field becomes and the pull you would experience would be smaller
Latest Answers