--- title: Alice's fall and her sizes: falling, the centre of the Earth, giants and tiny people — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Alice's fall and her sizes: falling, the centre of the Earth, giants and tiny people», a lesson of the physics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Alice falls down the rabbit hole so slowly that she takes a jar of orange marmalade o --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/) / Alice's fall and her sizes: falling, t… # Alice's fall and her sizes: falling, the centre of the Earth, giants and tiny people Lesson 41 of the physics course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/0/) — Alice falls down the rabbit hole so slowly that she takes a jar of orange marmalade off a shelf on the way and puts it back further down. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/1/) — In real life a fall gets faster and faster every second, so this only works in a dream, and the book is a dream. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/2/) — As she falls she wonders if she will come out on the other side of the Earth, among «the Antipathies» who walk with their heads downward. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/3/) — She is right that the Earth is about four thousand miles to its centre, but nobody on the other side is upside down: «down» everywhere means towards the middle of the Earth. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/4/) — Then she shrinks to ten inches and grows to over nine feet, and later to three inches and huge again. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/5/) — No drink or cake can do that, but asking «what would really happen if I were tiny, or a giant?» is real science: size changes how hot or cold you get, how heavy you are and how strong your legs need to be. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/6/) — So enjoy the dream, and keep the real rules for the real world: things fall faster and faster, the Earth's middle is hotter than any oven, and people grow slowly, a few centimetres a year. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/7/) — A falling object speeds up every second because gravity keeps pulling it; only air pushing back slows it, which is why a parachute falls gently and a stone does not. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/8/) — With no air in the way, a heavy thing and a light thing fall at the same speed; an astronaut showed this on the Moon in 1971 by dropping a hammer and a feather, which landed together. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/10/) — The Earth's centre is a ball of iron and nickel about as hot as the surface of the Sun, and around it is a layer of melted metal, so no tunnel could ever be dug through. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/11/) — In an imaginary airless tunnel through the Earth, you would speed up until the middle, then slow down and just reach the other side, then fall back again, like a swing. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/12/) — The antipodes of a place is the point exactly opposite it on the other side of the Earth; for Britain it is in the Pacific Ocean south-east of New Zealand, which is why people in Britain call Australia and New Zealand «the Antipodes». - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/13/) — People in Australia and New Zealand stand with their feet down and heads up just like us, because «down» always means towards the centre of the Earth. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/14/) — Children usually grow about 5 to 6 centimetres a year, faster as babies and again during the teenage years, and stop growing in their late teens or early twenties. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/15/) — Food, sleep and exercise help children grow well, but no food or drink can make you shrink, or grow a lot in a few seconds as Alice does. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/16/) — A tiny person would lose heat quickly, like a mouse, because small bodies have a lot of skin for their size; that is why mice and shrews must eat very often to stay warm. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/17/) — If you were twice as tall, twice as wide and twice as thick, you would weigh about 2 × 2 × 2 = 8 times as much, but your bones would only be about 4 times as strong, so giants would find it very hard to stand and walk. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/41-alice-s-fall-and-sizes-falling-the-centre-of-the-earth-giants-and-tiny-people/19/) — When Alice cries as a giant she makes a pool of tears deep enough to swim in; real tears come in small drops, and even a long cry makes far less than a cupful. - ← previous: [Seasons and tides](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/40-seasons-and-tides/) - next →: [Olympiad: forces, floating and machines ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/42-olympiad-forces-floating-and-machines/) - ↑ back to [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/)