(Modern readers can substitute ``rocket ship'' for Einstein's elevator.) If a ball is dropped in the elevator at rest on the Earth, it will accelerate toward the floor with an acceleration of 9.8 meters/second 2. He proposed an experiment involving two elevators: one at rest on the ground on the Earth and another, far out in space away from any planet, moon, or star, accelerating upward with an acceleration equal to that of one Earth gravity (9.8 meters/second 2). Part of Einstein's genius was his ability to look at ordinary things from a whole new perspective and logically follow through on the consequence of the insights he gained from his new perspective.
The fact that the twomasses are the same is why Galileo found that all things will fall with the sameacceleration. In Newton's second law of motion,an object's mass is measured by seeing how much it resists a change in motion (its inertia).In Newton's law of gravity, anobject's mass is determined by measuring how much gravity force it feels. Einstein was intrigued by the fact that the two ways ofmeasuring mass come up with the same value. Einstein's Relativity Curved Spacetime Chapter index in this window Chapterindex in separate window This material (including images) is copyrighted!.See my copyright notice for fair use practices.Įinstein extended his Special Relativity theory to include gravitation andnon-uniform motion.
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