Mechanics

Paperweight, defined
by the Oxford Dictionary as
“a small, heavy object for
keeping loose papers in
place.” The humble
paperweight has more to it
than what meets the eye. It
will not serve its purpose of
holding down papers
without the help of the
Earth’s Gravitational Force.
In everyday life, gravitation
is most familiar as the agent
that gives weight to objects
with mass and causes them
to fall to the ground when
dropped. Paperweights are objects with mass, therefore; the gravitational
force pulls the object to the earth’s core thus giving the paperweight its
weight. When a paperweight is put over pieces of paper on a surface, the
weight that draws the paperweight downward clamps the paper in place.
Gravity is the attraction of mass to other mass. It is a "pull" rather
than a "push" in that light. This is a 17th century Newtonian way of looking
at Gravity. According to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, gravity is a
push. The space around an object is malleable and is warped by that object.
So in Earth's case the Space is pushing us back down to earth.
Each atom that makes up the Earth will pull us, slightly of course, towards
it. The force that we feel towards the center of the Earth is the vector sum of
all these tiny forces. Some atoms will pull us more towards the East, but to
compensate, others will pull us more towards the west, for example. The
pull of most atoms will have a downward component; there are hardly any
atoms (as components of Earth) above us, to compensate for that.
There are many arguments for both pull and push when it comes to gravity, a
search of the internet will lead you to many arguments for both push and
pull.
Mechanics

Falling Apples (and other

objects). At the age of 23, while
relaxing on his mother's farm,
Isaac Newton, by his own account,
saw an apple falling from a tree.
That simple incident caused him to
wonder why apples always tumble
down. That apple tumbled down
toward the ground while the pale
August moon continued to sail
contentedly overhead. Soon he
theorized that the force of gravity
tugged on apple and moon falls off
systematically with increasing
altitude in the same way a light
beam dissipates as we move
farther away from its source.

Thus, by Newton's reckoning, the force of gravity pulling on the moon

should be about 1/3000th as strong as the gravity we experience at the
surface of the earth. In 1 minute, he soon calculated a falling apple would be
pulled downward about 10 miles, but the moon would fall toward the earth
only about 16 ft. During that same 1-minute interval, the moon's orbital
velocity also carried it sideways 38 miles. Consequently, its horizontal and
vertical motion combine to bring it back onto the same gently curving
circular path over and over again.

Isaac Newton figured out how gravity works because of a fortunate

encounter with his mother's favorite apple tree. Armed with only his inverse
square law of gravitation, three deceptively simple laws of motion, and one
of the most powerful intellects that ever pondered anything, Newton quietly
set about to unravel the hidden secrets of the universe.