Rubber Sheet Analogy For Warping Of Spacetime

Since spacetime warping can be a difficult concept to understand and visualise an analogy is often used in physics education.

Rubber sheet analogy for warping of spacetime.

It also implies that the warp is into a different dimension which is not necessary. Consider an equatorial slice through the black hole. The most common analogy for understanding gravity goes like this. This state of affairs is almost entirely the result of one the most famous analogies in science.

A common analogy is placing a heavy object on a stretched out rubber sheet causing the sheet to bend downward. It s often misused to show that mass warps spacetime 895. Figure 24 8 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. 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.

The system has some qualitative features in common with gravity. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. Spacetime can be thought as a thin rubber sheet. The mechanisms behind rolling down a dent and the geodesics of spacetime are different.

A rubber sheet warped by a heavy stone left is an excellent analogy for a black hole s warped space right. This curvature gives rise to the gravitational force. Figure pageindex 2 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. So the bottom line is that the rubber sheet analogy with spacetime is fundamentally flawed it simply cannot reproduce the motion that general relativity predicts.

On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. That s interesting and certainly a. Spacetime is like a rubber sheet that is flexible. With a rubber sheet the reason things roll into the bottom of the dent is well gravity.

The similarity is that something is warping which changes the path. That pit is caused by the central mass is 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. Now physicists have tested this idea theoretically and experimentally and say it doesn t hold water.

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. 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. This in fact is an excellent analogy. What is the geometry of that slice.