Apollo 13

Weightlessness is an interesting concept but it is a concept that is easily misunderstood. Most people believe weightlessness to be when there is no force of gravity being applied to an object like when an object is far away from any other object, but that is not true. Weightlessness is when an object ONLY experiences the force of gravity. An example of what it feels like to be weightless is right after the highest point on a roller coaster when the coaster goes straight down and all the passengers lift out of there seats for a split second. In a more scientific and mathematical sense a perfect scenario is in any freefall problem where gravity is the only force.

An important factor in understanding weightlessness is understanding what weight is. Weight is not the force of gravity, instead weight is the normal force which is the force that the earth pushes up on someone. An example of the difference between the force of gravity and weight is if someone were to exert a force downwards on you, you would feel like you had more wight than before, but the force of gravity has not changed.

In the movie Apollo 13 the astronauts experienced weightlessness. This is the case because while in space there is no normal force. Since the spacecraft is experiencing the same force of gravity and nothing else, the astronauts have no"ground" to stand on that  would exert a normal force on them.

I rate the physics in Apollo 13 GP

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