(Originally posted 3/16/2015)
We were taught that the earth’s gravity would cause two objects of different weight to fall at the same speed in the presence of a vacuum. For non-science students, it seems like nonsense and magic talk. For first year science students, concepts like these seemed hard to get your mind around, but you embrace it because you must – trusting that it’s not some joke of a nutty professor. In second year, you have learned to work with this concept as reality – even though it is so hard to imagine or envision. By the time you’ve been in science coursework for awhile, you’ve worked countless homework problems, answered naysayers and defended the theories yourself. You’ve done labs where you replicate the experiments in tiny-but-scalable situations and you really know and feel the truth of what you once thought ridiculous.
This is all very much like living by faith. Outsiders hear things and think the faithful to be out of our minds. In their zeal, young believers often embrace concepts too big for their minds, even sounding a bit foolish for awhile as they try to explain these big ideas to others. Seasoned faithful people have tested and approved the theories that they could formerly only regard with awe and fascination.
Scripture teaches that one day things will change for those who have believed in Christ without seeing him with our eyes or touching him with our hands. One day, we will put on immortality and eternal life and “see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That will be a great day.
As I watched this video, it was as if the theories I was taught as a child were being played out in front of me. There was an immense sense of satisfaction and even vindication like: We weren’t wrong! We weren’t wrong!
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43-CfukEgs
The key moment here:
https://youtu.be/E43-CfukEgs?t=2m38s
One day, I believe there will be a different realization and a different satisfaction. I believe that we will see the descent of something more beautiful than feathers and a ball. Scripture says -and I believe- that:
“The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
*****
(Disclaimer: I’m no Physics professor, but I think the final statement of the presenter is misleading. To sum up the cool presentation with a statement about there being no force acting on the objects is, at best, confusing. He’s referring to Einstein’s Equivalence theory and the idea that in a vacuum, there are [generally] no other forces at work BEYOND gravity. He was not saying that there are zero forces acting on the objects in this experiment.)
To make a similar, smaller experiment, confound and excite your kids for science:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/falling_feather/
Re: Equivalence Principle
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/18may_equivalenceprinciple/
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2004/nov/16/equivalence-principle-passes-atomic-test