What nature wants to do?
Is the gravity a manifestation of a greater law?
Gravity is the name associated with the mishaps of the milk
spilled from the breakfast table to the kitchen floor and the youngster who topples to the pavement as the grand finale of the first bicycle ride. Gravity is the name associated with the reason for "what goes up, must come down," whether it be the baseball hit in the neighborhood sandlot game or the child happily jumping on the backyard mini-trampoline. We all know of the word gravity - it is the thing that causes objects to fall to Earth. Yet the role of physics is to do more than to associate words with phenomenon. The role of physics is to explain phenomenon in terms of underlying principles. The goal is to explain phenomenon in terms of principles that are so universal that they are capable of explaining more than a single phenomenon but a wealth of phenomenon in a consistent manner. Thus, a student's conception of gravity must grow in sophistication to the point that it becomes more than a mere name associated with falling phenomenon. Gravity must be understood in terms of its cause, its source, and its far-reaching implications on the structure and the motion of the objects in the universe
