Hello
I came across a secondary school physics teacher recently who said that he explicitely teaches his pupils that gravity is not a force. His reason for this is that gravity is the field and weight is the name given to the force of gravity. This is giving me quite a headache for the following reasons:
Pros of teacher's argument:
1) He's right, as in nothing he said was factually incorrect.
2) Looking at the big picture, its kind of good that the teacher had a deeper knowledge of the subject than most science teachers.
Cons of teacher's argument:
1) He's just trying to be a smart-rse. I have a physics degree and no-one from my school teachers right up to university lecturers (who listed gravity as a fundamental force) has seen the need to pick apart the language of gravity in such a way. Thus I feel gravity being called a force is accepted by everyone else Ive ever met so why would the teacher be so picky?
So the questions Id like answered is does the teacher have a point and more importantly, should he be teaching kids this point? Is it an important distinction like weight/mass or substance/material, or is it just about the English language?
