Gravity Word Search

Mass, weight, free fall, orbits and tides: the vocabulary of a gravity unit, with a meaning for every word.

Name Date

Gravity Word Search

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0 of 20 words found

FTMSESREYPSLEDS

RTOMASSDHUYLAIU

EZORROCEULDOFSN

ETNNTLAHPLANETR

FSHTHTRUOFXQSAL

AVTIDEBPLQXSINN

LATGWTSNORBITCE

LCMATTERRADWBEW

SUELDGRAVITYOQT

IUVINRJIYBNDNYO

EMLLATTRACTYRTN

ACCELERATIONETT

CIAOESATELLITEU

MWGUWEHWEIGHTFR

LWCWNFFORCEFKTS

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

GravityGRAVITY
ForceFORCE
PullPULL
AttractATTRACT
MassMASS
WeightWEIGHT
MatterMATTER
DistanceDISTANCE
NewtonNEWTON
Free fallFREE FALL
AccelerationACCELERATION
VacuumVACUUM
GalileoGALILEO
OrbitORBIT
SatelliteSATELLITE
MoonMOON
PlanetPLANET
EarthEARTH
SunSUN
TideTIDE

20 words from the Gravity Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Gravity Word Search

FTMSESREYPSLEDS

RTOMASSDHUYLAIU

EZORROCEULDOFSN

ETNNTLAHPLANETR

FSHTHTRUOFXQSAL

AVTIDEBPLQXSINN

LATGWTSNORBITCE

LCMATTERRADWBEW

SUELDGRAVITYOQT

IUVINRJIYBNDNYO

EMLLATTRACTYRTN

ACCELERATIONETT

CIAOESATELLITEU

MWGUWEHWEIGHTFR

LWCWNFFORCEFKTS

GRAVITY, FORCE, PULL, ATTRACT, MASS, WEIGHT, MATTER, DISTANCE, NEWTON, FREE FALL, ACCELERATION, VACUUM, GALILEO, ORBIT, SATELLITE, MOON, PLANET, EARTH, SUN, TIDE

Next step Print pushes, friction and the laws of motion Type in the terms from your own gravity unit

All 123 words

Gravity Basics 25

Attract To draw closer: any two objects with mass do this to each other.
Balance A device that compares an object with known masses; a change in gravity does not alter its reading.
Center The middle point of a planet, toward which its gravity draws objects.
Distance The space between two objects; double it and the gravity between them drops to a quarter.
Downward The direction of Earth's gravity: toward the middle of the planet.
Fall To move toward the ground under gravity, as a dropped ball does.
Field The region around a mass in which another mass feels its gravity.
Force Any push that can change how an object moves; weight is one, measured in newtons.
Gravity The force that draws all objects with mass toward each other and keeps your feet on the ground.
Ground The solid surface of the Earth, where a dropped object lands.
Heavy Hard to lift, because gravity acts strongly on a large mass.
Inverse square The law's rule for distance: twice as far apart means one quarter of the force.
Mass A measure of how much matter an object holds, in kilograms; it stays the same on the Moon.

Show all 123 words (110 more)

Gravity Basics, continued

Matter Anything that has mass and takes up space.
Mutual Shared both ways: you draw the Earth toward you as hard as it draws you.
Newton The unit of force, named for the scientist who published the law of universal gravitation.
Pound A unit of mass in the US customary system, equal to about 0.45 kilograms.
Proportional How the force grows with mass: double one mass and the force doubles.
Pull What Earth's gravity does to everything near it: draws it toward the middle of the planet.
Range How far gravity reaches: it has no limit, though its effect fades with distance.
Scale A device for measuring weight; a spring one would read less on the Moon.
Sphere The round shape that a planet's own gravity gives it.
Strength How hard gravity acts: greater for more mass, less the farther apart two objects are.
Universal Acting everywhere: Newton's law says every particle pulls on every other particle.
Weight How hard gravity acts on an object; on the Moon it is about one sixth of what it is on Earth.

Falling and Free Fall 25

Acceleration The rate at which velocity changes: a dropped object gains about 9.8 meters per second each second.
Apple The fruit that falls from a tree near Newton in the legend.
Cannonball In the thought experiment named for it, a shot from a high mountain that could circle the Earth.
Descend To move toward the ground, as a parachute does slowly.
Drop To let go of an object so that gravity moves it toward the ground.
Feather Released beside a hammer on the Moon in 1971, it landed at the same moment.
Free fall Motion with gravity as the only force acting, like a ball let go where there is no air.
Galileo Italian scientist said to have let two unequal weights go from a famous leaning building.
Height How far above the ground an object is before it is let go.
Incline A sloping surface: balls rolling down one were timed in early studies of falling.
Jump Leave the ground this way and gravity brings you straight back.
Leaf It flutters to the ground slowly, because air pushes on its wide, light surface.
Parabola The curve a thrown ball follows when gravity is the only force on it.
Plumb bob A pointed weight hung from a string, which gravity draws into a line straight toward the ground.
Plummet To drop straight down fast; also a name for the pointed weight on a builder's string.
Resistance With "air", the force that slows a falling sheet of paper more than a falling coin.
Skydiver A person who leaps from an aircraft and falls through the air before opening a canopy.
Squared In "meters per second ___", the word that shows speed changing every second.
Stone Let go beside a sheet of paper, it lands first, because air slows it less.
Suborbital Describes a flight that reaches space but comes back to the ground before one full trip around.
Terminal With "velocity", the greatest speed an object can reach as it falls through air.
Throw To send a ball through the air by hand; gravity bends its path back to the ground.
Tower The leaning building of the famous story about two unequal weights.
Vacuum A space empty of air, in which light and heavy objects drop side by side.
Vertical Straight up and down: the line a hanging weight on a string follows.

Orbits and Weightlessness 25

Apogee The point of a path around Earth that is farthest from the planet.
Astronaut A space traveler who floats inside a spacecraft as both fall around the Earth.
Atmosphere The layer of gases that a planet's gravity holds around it.
Barycenter The shared center of mass around which two bodies, such as Earth and Moon, circle.
Earth The planet whose gravity gives you your weight and holds down the air you breathe.
Ellipse The stretched-circle shape of a planet's path around the Sun.
Escape velocity The least speed an object needs to break away from a planet's gravity for good.
Flyby A close pass of a spacecraft by a planet without landing on it.
Geostationary Describes a satellite above the equator that seems fixed in the sky.
Kepler Astronomer who published three laws describing how the planets move around the Sun.
Lagrange With "point", a place where a small object stays put relative to two larger circling bodies.
Microgravity A name for the near-weightless condition aboard a spacecraft that is circling the Earth.
Moon The body whose gravity raises the ocean tides; on its surface gravity is about one sixth of Earth's.
Orbit The curved path of a planet around a star, or a moon around a planet, held by gravity.
Path The route an object follows; gravity bends a planet's into a closed curve.
Perigee The point of a path around Earth that is nearest the planet.
Period The time one full trip around a planet or star takes.
Planet A large, rounded body that circles a star; the Solar System has eight.
Satellite A spacecraft that circles a planet; a moon is a natural one.
Sideways The direction a satellite moves so fast that it keeps missing the ground as it falls.
Slingshot A flyby that uses a planet's gravity to change a spacecraft's speed and path.
Solar system The Sun together with the planets and other bodies that its gravity holds around it.
Sun The star whose gravity keeps every planet of the Solar System on its path.
Weightless How astronauts feel while circling the Earth: in constant free fall, with no floor pressing back.
Zero In "___ gravity", a misleading name for floating in space: gravity is still there.

Tides 23

Bay Fundy, in Canada, is one with the highest range of high and low water in the world.
Bore A wave that the incoming sea pushes up a river, against the river's flow.
Bulge The swelling of the ocean on the sides of Earth facing toward and away from the Moon.
Current A flow of water; the turning sea sets one running in and out of a bay.
Diurnal Describes a coast with only one high water and one low water each day.
Ebb The falling of the sea over several hours, uncovering the shore.
Flood The rising of the sea over several hours, covering the shore.
King With "tide", a popular name for an especially high one.
Locked With "tidally", how the Moon turns: once per trip around Earth, so one side always faces us.
Lunar Of the Moon: each ___ month brings the largest range of high and low water twice.
Neap With "tide", the moderate kind that comes when Sun and Moon pull at right angles.
Ocean The body of salt water that the Moon's gravity pulls back and forth.
Perigean Describes the largest tides, which come when a new or full Moon is also at its nearest.
Rise To come up, as the sea does over several hours before high water.
Roche limit The distance inside which a planet's uneven gravity breaks a circling body apart.
Sea level The average height of the ocean's surface, from which land heights are measured.
Shore The land at the sea's edge; its lower part is covered at high water and bare at low water.
Spring With "tide", the larger kind at new and full Moon; nothing to do with the season.
Stream With "tidal", the back-and-forth flow of water that the rise and fall of the sea produces.
Tidal With "force", the uneven pull of gravity that stretches a body toward the mass attracting it.
Tide The regular rise and fall of sea level, caused mainly by the Moon's gravity.
Turning What the sea is said to be doing when its stream reverses direction.
Twice How often most coasts see high water each day.

Theories of Gravity 25

Aristotle Ancient Greek thinker who held that heavier objects fall faster, later shown to be false.
Black hole A body so compact that its gravity keeps anything, even light, from escaping.
Cavendish English scientist whose experiment of 1797 to 1798 first measured gravity between masses in a lab.
Clock It ticks more slowly the closer it sits to a large mass.
Curvature The bending of space and time around a mass, which is how Einstein pictured gravity.
Dark matter Invisible, hypothetical material inferred from gravitational effects on galaxies.
Deflect To turn aside: a massive cluster of galaxies does this to passing light.
Einstein Physicist whose general theory describes gravity as the bending of space and time.
Equivalence With "principle", the idea that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same.
Experiment A test of an idea, such as timing balls that roll down a ramp.
Fundamental Describes the four basic interactions of nature, of which gravity is one.
Geodesic The straightest possible path on a curved surface: a straight line made general.
Geometry The mathematics of shape; Einstein's theory of gravity is built on it.
Gravitation The word in the title of Newton's law for the attraction between all masses.
Graviton A hypothetical particle proposed as the carrier of the force of gravity.
Hooke English scientist who wrote in Micrographia that our Moon has a gravity of its own.
LIGO The observatory whose detectors first measured gravitational waves, on 14 September 2015.
Pisa Italian city of the leaning building in the story of Galileo's falling weights.
Prediction What a theory says will be found; gravitational waves were one of Einstein's.
Relativity With "general", the accepted modern description of how gravity works.
Spacetime The four-dimensional blend of three directions of space with time.
Starlight In 1919 astronomers measured how the Sun's gravity bent it during an eclipse.
Theory A well-tested explanation; general relativity is the accepted one for gravity.
Torsion With "balance", the twisting instrument used to measure the tiny attraction between lead balls.
Wave A ripple in space and time made by moving masses; the first was detected directly in 2015.

How it works

All 20 key terms of this gravity word search fit the first grid, Mass, Weight, Pull, Free fall, Acceleration, Orbit and Tide among them. Friction and the laws of motion are on the force and motion word search.

Read the full guide

From a dropped ball to an orbit

Under Start from a list, Gravity Basics has 25 words, such as Attract, Distance, Inverse square and Proportional. Falling and Free Fall has 25 too, with Vacuum, Feather, Parabola and Plumb bob. Orbits and Weightlessness, also 25, runs from Ellipse and Perigee to Escape velocity.

Tides and theories

Tides has 23 words and makes a sheet of its own: Neap, Spring, Bulge, Ebb, Bore. Theories of Gravity has 25 for older classes, among them Relativity, Spacetime, Graviton and Geodesic. Easy Gravity keeps to short words such as Pull, Mass, Moon and Fall.

Free fall, Escape velocity, Black hole and 6 more two-word entries hide closed up: FREEFALL.

Questions and answers

What is gravity?

Gravity is the pull that every object with mass has on every other. A planet's gravity draws things toward its center. More mass means a stronger pull and more distance a weaker one. The Sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit.

What is the difference between mass and weight?

Mass measures how much matter an object holds, in kilograms. Weight is the force of gravity on that mass, in newtons. One kilogram weighs about 9.8 newtons on Earth and about one sixth of that on the Moon.

Why do astronauts float in space?

Not because gravity is missing. A spacecraft in orbit and everyone in it are falling around the Earth together, so no floor presses back on them and they feel weightless. The name zero gravity is misleading.

What causes tides?

Mainly the gravity of the Moon, with the Sun's. It raises a bulge of ocean on the sides of Earth facing toward and away from the Moon, and as Earth turns, most coasts meet two high waters and two low waters a day.

Is there a free printable word search about gravity?

This one is free and needs no sign-up. It prints as two pages on Letter or A4, the grid first and its answer key second. With Show clues, not words ticked, Matter reads "Anything that has mass and takes up space."

All 123 words

Gravity Basics 25

Gravity Basics, continued

Falling and Free Fall 25

Orbits and Weightlessness 25

Tides 23

Theories of Gravity 25

How it works

From a dropped ball to an orbit

Tides and theories

Questions and answers

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