Did you ever wonder why anything you pick up and let go falls down? If you didn’t, now it’s time. Because natural phenomenons like this are quite interesting as soon as you start thinking about. And no, it is not too complicated for children or only to be treated in high-school.
Of course, children won’t be able to calculate the kinetic energy of a sphere with a weight of 2375 grams falling from 13,32 m in a vacuum world where gravity is 5,087 m/s^2^. (By the way, would you?)
But given the right explanations and examples, they can understand a lot more than one might expect. That’s what we tried. Short texts present the very basic principles while the animation invites the visitor to make his own experiences and get a feel for the effects of gravity by choosing different values of the physical force and tossing around with a red ball. Boring? I bet you’ll try more than once.
(Psst: yup, it’s about 160.93 Joule…)