Earth vs Space: Is a Falling Ball PULL or PUSH?

[Deepak K Kapur]

When a ball falls towards Earth, what is actually happenning...

Is the Earth PULLING the ball?
or
Is the space PUSHING the ball?

(Be assured that I can understand you. Before becoming a teacher of literature, I studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics upto graduation level. The previous thread was an attempt to find 'some reason in madness')

 

[wabbit]

Neither. In a vacuum, the ball is in free motion. If in the atmosphere, air is pushing it upward (slowing down its fall).

 

[Ibix]

When a ball falls towards Earth, what is actually happenning...

Is the Earth PULLING the ball?
or
Is the space PUSHING the ball?

In general relativity, neither. The presence of mass changes the geometry of space-time so that the "natural" direction of travel is not a straight line but a curve.

(Be assured that I can understand you. Before becoming a teacher of literature, I studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics upto graduation level. The previous thread was an attempt to find 'some reason in madness')

Having skimmed your previous thread, I suspect that you will need to study a lot of maths to follow any answer much more in-depth than either mine or wabbit's.

 

[Vishwas D]

You could say both, or anyone. But since we need to reason it out, we bring out a theory to explain force acting between two bodies due to their mass...and say that the Earth and the ball attract each other...We could even tweak the theory in some places and say that the space is pushing those two bodies toward each other.

 

[A.T.]

When a ball falls towards Earth, what is actually happenning...

Depends on the definition of "actually". Physics can model this in different ways:

 

[Deepak K Kapur]

Thanks everybody.