I have a nine year old brother who has understood the concept of gravity for a while, so I don't think it's that big of a word for an eight year old. Simply tell her that it's called gravity and gravity is so strong that it pulls things that you throw up in the air down such as a ball. Children aren't stupid. They catch on to these things quicker than you might realize. :)

could always tell her that really really large things, like the earth kinda pull things to them.

Any thing which contains a mass or weight does require a base like earth to land up and be stable. They cannot just stay or float in air. Things does not have much mass and are lighter can float and travel in air. Then she may ask you, how the heavy planes etc fly in the air. You can tell her that some times heavier things also may float and travel in air, if the wind power is stronger than the mass of that things. Heavy vehicles like planes etc, can be lifted to float and travel in the air with the help of mechanical power. My best wishes to your grand daughter. At eight years of age by asking such question, she looks like intelligent and more curious. Plz give her all support.

This is a wonderful opportunity to teach her how to do research. You can either take her to the library and ask the children's librian for help or do research on the internet. You might want to try going to kids.yahoo.com (DON'T type the www.) and do an internet search on gravity.

Tell her there's a force called Gravity which pulls all objects toward the center of the earth.

ooh...that's a tough one! hmmm...you can tell her that objects, such as the earth, pull things toward the center of them; this is known as gravity. as an illustration you could use...magnets maybe. Take a big magnet and a little magnet. Pretend the big magnet is the earth and the small one is whatever she throws up. Depending on how far away the small magnet is from the big one, the harder she will have to work to keep them apart. Then try it the other way. Pretend the small magnet is the earth and the big one is whatever she is thrown up. It kind of doesn't work very well...hmmm...Well, that's not a very good example...you may have to modify that to make it work.

In reference to your comment: isn't it to early for her to do research, no I don't think it is too early at all. That's why I said "teach her how". I am not talking about doing a 12 page research paper. I am talking about learning to to find information at the library with a librian's help or learning to find information on the computer with your help. By learning how to find things on her own it will be much easier for her when she has to do research in school (for me that was the 4th grade). She will also probably get a sense of accomplishment that she can do things on her own. If she gets frustrated or shows a lot of resistence then drop it. I am not suggesting that you force her I am suggesting that you make it an adventure for both of you. If she thinks its fun then she probably will enjoy it. A note of caution whenever a child of this age is on the Internet I would suggest close supervision to make sure they are only using age appropriate sights.

These are all fairly decent answers. But if she can't grasp the concept of gravity, treat it like the question where do babies come from. Lie to her.

"Very large objects, like the Earth, pull things toward themselves. This is called gravity." "Why?" "Well, it's just the way things work." And if she asks "Why?" Well... Uh... Go ask you mother." (Sorry... Couldn't resist! ;-) )

Your daughter wants to understand gravity in a way that she can relate to - gravity is a very real dynamic system and one which can be pictured even by a small child. This question: what exactly is gravity is one that I have been working on for many years - I have just written a book on the very subject - see my website: quarkphysics.50megs.com If you understand it then you will be able to explain it to her in a way she will understand. For now tell her that the particles which the Earth is made of are little machines which pull everything in towards them. To help her picture this put a small floating object in a sink of water and pull out the plug! If you want to know more my email address is on my website.

1) Tell her that "all heavy things fall down to the earth by a law of nature, for it is the nature of the earth to attract and to keep things, as it is the nature of water to flow, that of fire to burn, and that of wind to set in motion" Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity 2) If she doesn't buy this, tell her that: - it is a law of nature that matter attracts other matter, but that it is a very small attraction and you need a huge amount of matter such as the Earth to combine it to a big attraction. - this has been observed over the years by scientists, and we can measure this attraction quite precisely, and use our knowledge about it to send rockets to the moon, for instance. - we are not absolutely sure about how this is happening, and the theories about it are quite difficult, but we know that it is a property of matter, just like it is a property of a magnet to attract some materials. 3) If she wants more details, tell here that one of those theories says that the world has not only the three dimensions of space and the dimension of time that we can directly observe, but that there are also some other hidden dimensions. "The basic idea is that the fundamental constituents of reality are strings of the Planck length (about 10^−33 m) which vibrate at resonant frequencies." "Our physical space is observed to have only three large dimensions and—taken together with time as the fourth dimension—a physical theory must take this into account. However, nothing prevents a theory from including more than 4 dimensions, per se. In the case of string theory, consistency requires spacetime to have 10, 11 or 26 dimensions. The conflict between observation and theory is resolved by making the unobserved dimensions compactified. Our minds have difficulty visualizing higher dimensions because we can only move in three spatial dimensions. One way of dealing with this limitation is not to try to visualize higher dimensions at all, but just to think of them as extra numbers in the equations that describe the way the world works." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstring_theory

Tell her its the same reason that she doesn't float off into space when she jumps or is tossed into the air. It just happens to belong on Earth. gigglz17

You could compare it to magnetism. The Earth and everything on it are attracted to each other just like paper clips (or some other small metal objects) are to a magnet. Of course this is completely inaccurate, but a visual aid always a long way to conveying something complex in simple terms.

Because of a distortion in space-time due to the mass of the Earth.