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What is gravity (more specific than the force that keeps you on the ground, etc.)? What is electricity?
Question Date: 2006-03-18
Answer 1:

Gravity is the phenomenon that two objects with a mass will exert a force onto each other. So, you could say it is the force that keeps you on the ground but also that it is the force that keeps the earth glued to your feet.

This force gets bigger with the mass of the two objects in question and smaller with their distance from each other. This is why you could jump very far and high on the (small) moon and why astronauts in space, far from earth, freely float around. It's not that there is zero gravity; there is a small force that will for example keep the astronaut's space station or satellites on their orbit around earth. It's just that this force is so much smaller that what would be needed to keep one's feet on the ground

Electricity is anything that has to do with charges, I would say. From your question, it seems that you are referring to the Coulomb force, which has a certain resemblance to gravity. It is the force between two charged objects, and again it decreases with distance but increases with the amount of charge on the objects.

Whether the objects are like-charged or oppositely charged determines whether the force is attractive, as gravity, or repulsive.



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