Question

Someone please correct anything from description as needed, or if someone understands the hypothetical situation I'm trying to impart and feels they can word it better; from what my brain can scrabble together from bits of school level physics (secondary school for UK or high school for US).Potential energy is gained by an object as it lifted or moved away from a source of gravity (i.e throwing a ball in the air or carrying it up to the roof of a high building.)Gravity doesn't run on energy or transfer energy to items under its effect (any potential energy an object has when falling has been transferred by the effort/work done to move it away from said source of gravity.) In this case the energy is being transferred to the ball via the effort from the person carrying/throwing said ball or in the case of a really dedicated person some form of chemical propellant to 'launch' the ball as energy cannot be created or destroyed this means the potential energy the object gains being moved must be directly linked to the energy expended moving it.So the effort/energy transferred by moving the object in a low gravity environment will be less than than amount to do the same in a high gravity environment so in a hypothetical situation of say a colony on the Moon a cheeky lunar child decides to throw his baseball at Earth and does so with enough effort/energy to break the Moon's gravity.

Now in this hypothetical situation the Moon's orbit is at a time where it is closer to Earth than 'average' so the lunar baseball is floating in space and the Moon orbits onward and eventually the Earths gravity takes hold of the space baseball and starts drawing in it towards the Earth.

After a while it starts to travel to the Earth with the same acceleration and potential energy that a baseball that had originated from Earth would have had if launched to the same distance from Earth from the Earth's surface, so in this very hypothetical situation, how has the lunar baseball now got the same amount of potential energy as one originating from the Earth's surface?

Answer 1

When a ball is thrown from the Moon towards the Earth, it gains potential energy as it moves closer to the Earth due to the Earth's stronger gravitational force.

Step-by-step explanation:

Potential energy is gained by an object as it is lifted or moved away from a source of gravity, such as throwing a ball in the air or carrying it up to a high building. In the case of a ball thrown from the Moon towards the Earth, the ball gains potential energy as it moves closer to the Ea

h. This is because the Earth has greater mass than the Moon and exerts a stronger gravitational force on the ball, giving it the same amount of potential energy as a ball thrown from the surface of the Earth to the same distance.

When a ball is thrown from the Moon towards the Earth, it gains potential energy as it moves closer to the Earth due to the Earth's stronger gravitational force.