The rubber ball's behavior when dropped from the ladder demonstrates that gravity acts downward, as evidenced by the ball falling straight to the ground instead of moving sideways. Each bounce reaches a lesser height vertically, reinforcing that the continuous force of gravity pulls objects toward the center of the Earth, not parallel to the ground.
A rubber ball is dropped from the top of a ladder. It bounces on the same spot on the ground several times, each time to a lesser height than the previous bounce, before coming to rest in place. In one or two sentences, explain how the experiment shows the direction that gravity pulls an object, specifically showing that it does not pull an object parallel to the ground.
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