Why is gravity ubiquitously depicted as such in text books. Where M1 and M2 are the mass of any two objects and the arrows represent a force:
M1 F1------------> <--------------F2 M2
To me this is counterintuitive. Gravity is an attractive force. If you were pulling on M2, it would be depicted like so:
F1 <---------------M2
Likewise if you were pushing on M2, it could be depicted as follows:
F1 ---------------> M2
Same goes for tension. When two people pull on a rope ala tug of war, it's always illustrated as such:
Person 1 T1 --------> <------------- T2 Person 2 .
Again, in a FBD if you were person one and tied a rope around person 2 and pulled, it would look like this:
Person 1 T1 <-------------------Person 2.
What is the reason for this disparity? I'm pretty handy with problem solving and this hasn't caused any problems but it always eats at me when I see these two illustrations. What am I missing here? Thanks in advance for any replies.
M1 F1------------> <--------------F2 M2
To me this is counterintuitive. Gravity is an attractive force. If you were pulling on M2, it would be depicted like so:
F1 <---------------M2
Likewise if you were pushing on M2, it could be depicted as follows:
F1 ---------------> M2
Same goes for tension. When two people pull on a rope ala tug of war, it's always illustrated as such:
Person 1 T1 --------> <------------- T2 Person 2 .
Again, in a FBD if you were person one and tied a rope around person 2 and pulled, it would look like this:
Person 1 T1 <-------------------Person 2.
What is the reason for this disparity? I'm pretty handy with problem solving and this hasn't caused any problems but it always eats at me when I see these two illustrations. What am I missing here? Thanks in advance for any replies.
