Question

PLEASE HELP:

A beam of light and a baseball are both affected by gravity. Why is the path of the baseball very different than the path of the light beam? Use 3 – 4 complete sentences in your explanation.

Answer 1

As a preface, I am no expert on this subject. I am a first year university physics student who is drawing on past knowledge from conversations with professors and my understanding. This is somethings you could say though from what I know

Answer 2

First off the difference in mass while both photons and a baseball have mass the mass of a photon is so small that it is often time called massless even though this is not true. A photon though has such an infinitesimally small mass though compared to a baseball and since we know \[F=ma\] we will see any sort of force on it will be much less than anything on a baseball.

Answer 3

Second the speed in a vacuum all photons travel at c if we look at kinematic equations most of them are time dependent and since a photon is moving so fast if it were say traveling by the earth the amount of time it would spend in the sphere of influence would be so small compared to say a baseball which would not be moving as fast as the photon

Answer 4

Thank you! This helped me a lot!

Answer 5

Could you help me with one more?

Answer 6

sure