What Is Gravity?

Students learn that gravity is an attraction between all masses whose strength depends on mass and distance, and follow it from falling objects to orbits, the Sun, Jupiter, a supermassive black hole and Einstein's curved space and time.

Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops7 stops

The full guide, with the 40-minute plan, discussion key points, exit ticket, activities, transcript and PDF, comes with a teacher license. Already licensed? Use Open the full guide.

What students will see and do

Students fly from Earth to the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter and Sagittarius A star at the galaxy's center, then return home as Aetherion builds the idea of gravity step by step from Galileo to Newton to Einstein. The class pauses at the Moon, the Sun and the black hole to discuss orbits, what would happen without gravity, and the trampoline model of space and time.

Learning objectives

• State that gravity is an attractive force between any two objects with mass and that both objects pull on each other.
• Explain how increasing mass strengthens gravity and increasing distance weakens it, including that doubling distance makes the pull one fourth as strong.
• Describe an orbit as continuous falling combined with sideways motion, using the Moon and Earth as examples.
• Give evidence that gravity acts across the universe, citing the Sun's hold on Neptune, Jupiter's effect on a comet, and stars orbiting the galactic black hole.

NGSS connections

Stops on this journey

1. Everything Falls
2. Newton's Big Idea
3. Falling Around the World (discussion stop)
4. The Great Anchor (discussion stop)
5. The Giant's Pull
6. Where Gravity Wins (discussion stop)
7. Gravity and You

Vocabulary

• gravity
• mass
• air resistance
• orbit
• universal gravitation
• escape speed
• black hole
• event horizon