Ready Jet Go
Gravity
Clip: Season 2 Episode 21 | 1m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Amy talks about gravity.
Amy talks about gravity and compares Earth's gravity to other surfaces in space.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Ready Jet Go
Gravity
Clip: Season 2 Episode 21 | 1m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Amy talks about gravity and compares Earth's gravity to other surfaces in space.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Ready Jet Go
Ready Jet Go is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
- And now, here's my friend, astronomer Amy Mainzer.
- Thanks, Jet.
Have you ever heard the saying, what goes up must come down?
So why doesn't this water balloon just keep going up when I toss it?
Ohh!
The balloon landed with a splat because Earth's gravity brought it right to the ground.
Gravity's a force that pulls one thing toward another.
Things that are big tend to have more gravity than things that are small.
The Earth is way, way, way bigger than either me or the water balloon.
So it pulls both of us down pretty strongly.
But not everything in space is as big as the Earth.
The Moon is a lot smaller than the Earth, so it has less gravity than Earth does.
If I were on the Moon, I could jump a lot higher.
And I'd come down a lot slower.
If I were on something even smaller than the Moon, like, say, a space rock called an asteroid, I might even be able to jump so high I could launch myself right into space.
But back here on Earth, gravity keeps me firmly on the ground.
But wouldn't it be great if I could just have some Bortronian technology that would turn it off?
- Thanks, Amy!
You can make your own science discoveries with "Ready Jet Go!"
games on the PBS KIDS Games app.
Start playing today!
Support for PBS provided by: