Rubber Sheet Analogy Fails To Explain Gravity

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.

Rubber sheet analogy fails to explain gravity.

The orange is curved space time. The dented rubber sheet done in earth s gravity is a not too bad analogy for newtonian gravity. Is there no gravity. 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.

Since spacetime warping can be a difficult concept to understand and visualise an analogy is often used in physics education. But a ball rolls on a surface because gravity is pulling it down. The analogy presented therein is somewhat similar to the rubber sheet one but does away with the weight in the center. Since i read cosmos long ago i see the same analogy about the balls rolling on a rubber sheet used to explain how gravity works.

They both begin walking parallel to each other northward toward the one of the poles. Let me try the ant analogy in a bit more detail. The rubber sheet or trampoline analogy for gravity is flawed because it is not fully three dimensional as a real star and planets would be. Here we have 1 space like dimension and one time like dimension curved into 3d.

The ants walk forward. Indeed physicists have known for ten years that a rubber sheet deformed by a central mass can never take on a shape that reproduces the gravitational effects of spacetime. Imagine a 2d spherical shell embedded in 3d space. The right hand side of this pair of drawings is closer to real life but still not accurate.

It s often misused to show that mass warps spacetime 895. In space it will follow a straight line and go over any hole on the surface. All analogies are flawed that s why they are analogies and not scientific theories. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line.

Explanation 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. Figure 24 8 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. The system has some qualitative features in common with gravity. Just placing an object somewhere in that dip will result in it rolling down the slope towards the bowling ball.