• lad
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    2 months ago

    Affecting passage of time looks like a difficult idea to come up with an analogy.

    For the better gravity analogy, I think a rubber sheet that has something pulling together at a “gravity well” and lines drawn on it may work better, but I’m not sure 😅

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The harder thing to convey is the full dimensionality of it. With the rubber sheet (or trampoline) you can show a small ball orbiting around a larger one but only in a single plane (around the “equator” of the large ball). However in reality you can orbit in any direction you like and many satellites actually orbit over the poles. Trying to show that with a small model seems extremely difficult!

      Furthermore, most children are raised on the idea that gravity is pulling them down. They intuitively understand the idea that when they climb a ladder and drop a ball from the top, the earth pulls the ball down. General relativity tells us that this is not happening at all! That there us nothing pulling us down whatsoever. I have yet to see anyone provide a lay person GR explanation for the ladder problem.

      • lad
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        2 months ago

        the earth pulls the ball down.

        Not in Australia, though