What If Gravity Turned Off for Five Seconds?

It's the middle of the school science fair, and forty kids, three teachers and one very confused goldfish are floating up near the gym ceiling. Your project is a small gray box with one red button. And gravity comes back on in three seconds. You found the box at a yard sale for one dollar. Press the button and gravity turns off for five seconds; press it again and you get five more. You hover over your bed, bite a floating ball of juice out of the air, turn Dot's cannonball into a giant floating cloud of water, and catch Grandma's falling vase with time to spare. But everything that goes up comes back down, your inner ear hates it, and a jump with no gravity doesn't stop at the top. We follow the consequences all the way through: the fun, the clever tricks, the messes, the scariest rule, and the science fair where it all comes together. We also cover the real science of gravity: why mass and weight aren't the same thing, why astronauts on the space station float even though gravity up there is almost as strong as on the ground, NASA's drop tower in Ohio that gives experiments about five seconds of weightlessness, why astronauts get dizzy, why water forms balls and flames burn round and blue in space, and what would really happen if Earth's gravity switched off. So would you want to turn off gravity for five seconds? Tell us in the comments. 00:00 Floating at the science fair 00:31 The yard-sale button 01:15 The rules 01:56 Hovering over your bed 02:16 A ball of juice 02:27 The floating pool splash 02:57 Getting clever 03:15 Moving a weightless piano 03:38 The straight-line free throw 04:02 Where it goes wrong 04:30 Dizzy in zero gravity 04:55 The scariest rule 05:30 The real science 05:55 Mass vs. weight 06:18 Why astronauts float 06:41 NASA's 5-second drop tower 07:19 If Earth's gravity switched off 07:55 Back to the science fair 09:02 Gravity comes back 10:03 Next time