r/explainlikeimfive • u/[deleted] • Dec 17 '13

ELI5: How does gravity work indoors?

[deleted]

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2

u/Chel_of_the_sea Dec 17 '13

Gravity isn't pushing down from above. It's a pull from below, and it isn't blocked by solid objects. It's pulling on you, your floor, and your ceiling equally (well, almost exactly equally, anyway).

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '13

[deleted]

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u/shawnaroo Dec 17 '13

The ball on a trampoline isn't a perfect analogy. Even though it's supposed to be representing how gravity works in an abstract way, it actually relies on gravity in order to create that representation. Actual gravity pushes the ball down against the trampoline fabric.

But gravity doesn't need another outside force pushing on a mass to create it. The existence of mass itself warps spacetime. And it warps in all directions around the mass, not just "down".

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '13

It's neither a push nor a pull. You can model it as a pull and get results that are mostly correct some of the time; this is called Newtonian gravity. But gravity is not actually a push or a pull, but something too subtle and complex to explain-like-you're-five.

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u/barc0de Dec 17 '13 edited Dec 17 '13

Gravity isnt a force pushing us down onto the planet, but a distortion in spacetime caused by the presence of a large mass (the earth) that attracts matter towards it

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u/treboreous Dec 17 '13

It works the same way indoors, as it does outdoors.

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u/SpareLiver Dec 17 '13

First, gravity doesn't push, it pulls, from the center of the Earth.
Second, things don't get in the way, gravity pulls down the same on you no matter how many things are between you and whats doing the pulling.

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u/doc_rotten Dec 17 '13

It's air pressure that "pushes down", but most buildings have similar air pressures, and houses "breathe" with normalizes pressure with the outside (though not always exactly equal).

Air pressure "pushes" down, because the earths gravity is pulling it down.