Kevin Wampler <wampler+pov### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> "is there gravity on the moon"

  When I was in high-school I had a friend who didn't quite understand
correctly the concept of forces, in particular the attracting force of
gravity. (Simpler times were those, in high-school, where the world was
purely Newtonian, but that's not important here...)

  In particular, it seemed that he didn't quite understand that a force
acting on an object does *not* necessarily imply movement. After having
been taught in physics class that actually *all* masses attract each
other, no matter their size (only the magnitude of the attracting force
depends on it), he seemed to think that for example given that two
mountains attract each other, they will eventually collide.

  No he was not a stupid person. In fact he was quite clever. It just
seemed that he didn't quite fully grasp the concept of forces and what
it actually means. (His reasoning would have been correct if the mountains
were in vacuum, but he seemed to seriously think that since mountains
attract each other because of gravity, they also move towards each other,
even though they are sitting firmly on the surface of the Earth.)

  It's difficult to explain. It made much sense in the situation.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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