Gravity

Weight on Planets

Aimed at pupils aged 11-14 this workshop makes use of some basic algebra and graphs to reinforce ideas about the effects of gravity and how these effects depend upon where in the Universe you are.

Orbital Demonstration

Start Animation

Have a look at the picture to the left and imagine that you are holding the satellite up above the Earth.

What do you think will happen if you "let go"? Press the Start button to see.

That's right, gravity makes the satellite fall straight down to the surface.

History of the Big Bang

The Universe started with the Big Bang about 14,000 million years ago (14,000,000,000 years). It started out very, very hot and has been expanding and cooling since then.

For the first tiny fraction of a second, everything was so hot, that we cannot describe what it was like, but we can use our knowledge of physics to give us a good idea of what was happening from as little as 10^-43 seconds (that is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds!) after the beginning.