Elevator Thought Experiment
Einstein is famous because of his thought experiments ("Gedankenexperimente"). For the foundation of General Relativity he designed the elevator thought experiment.

In the animation are sketched three different situations.

(1) a piece of weight of 1kg in an elevator at rest,

(2) the same object with a reduced weight in an elevator which is hold by a cable, and

(3) the object in a free falling elevator exhibiting a vanishing weight.

This equivalence principle based experiment is a corner stone for Einsteins General Theory of Relativity: Locally acceleration and gravitation are the same.
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