Orbital Motion and Weightlessness |
Find yourself the following: a trampoline, and large clear plastic jar with a lid, and a small rubber ball or ping pong ball.
Place the small ball in the plastic jar and seal the lid. Be sure to use a plastic jar in case you drop it. Then just hold the jar while jumping on the trampoline. Watch the ball in the jar as you go up. Since you are holding the jar, it will travel with you. But the ball in the jar is actually not physically attached, so it definitely will resist moving.
As you are moving upward from the trampoline, the ball most likely will be at the bottom of the jar.
But as you reach the top of your jump and start to fall back toward the trampoline, note that for a split second the ball seems to float inside the jar -- it is weightless and so are you! 
You can try variants on this theme in elevators, amusement park rides and elsewhere. If you think about it, counting the innumerable times each day you are partially weightless (jumping, riding in elevators, or even going down stars), throughout your lifetime you are weightless for a total of several months!
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