Rubber Sheet Analogy For Warping Of Spacetime

The system has some qualitative features in common with gravity.

Rubber sheet analogy for warping of spacetime.

That s interesting and certainly a. When a massive object creates a big depression in the sheet the ant which must walk where the sheet takes it finds its path changed warped dramatically. Since spacetime warping can be a difficult concept to understand and visualise an analogy is often used in physics education. If you put a mass i e the earth on the sheet the sheet will stretch out and create a pit into which other objects moons etc will fall in and orbit around.

What is the geometry of that slice. This comic refers to a common analogy used to explain how mass distorts space time a bowling ball resting on a sheet of rubber distorts the sheet due to its weight. It also implies that the warp is into a different dimension which is not necessary. This in fact is an excellent analogy.

That the warping of spacetime to produce gravity is like the deformation of a rubber sheet by a central mass. The most common analogy for understanding gravity goes like this. When a massive object creates a big depression in the sheet the ant which must walk where the sheet takes it finds its path changed warped dramatically. A rubber sheet warped by a heavy stone left is an excellent analogy for a black hole s warped space right.

On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. Now physicists have tested this idea theoretically and experimentally and say it doesn t hold water. In general relativity energy and mass have curvature effects on the four dimensions of the universe spacetime. The mechanisms behind rolling down a dent and the geodesics of spacetime are different.

It s often misused to show that mass warps spacetime 895. Spacetime is like a rubber sheet that is flexible. Consider an equatorial slice through the black hole. This curvature gives rise to the gravitational force.

The way masses warp the rubber sheet and affect other smaller masses can help students develop an intuitive understanding of how gravity works under gr. A common analogy is placing a heavy object on a stretched out rubber sheet causing the sheet to bend downward. Spacetime can be thought as a thin rubber sheet. The similarity is that something is warping which changes the path.

With a rubber sheet the reason things roll into the bottom of the dent is well gravity. That pit is caused by the central mass is gravity. Figure pageindex 2 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line.