Question

How come in free fall you feel weightless even though gravity is pulling down on you? (ignore air resistance when answering this question).

Answer 1

Weightlessness occurs when you do not feel the floor. To make this clear, we will use "apparent weight".

Suppose you are in an accelerating elevator and there is conveniently a weighing scale.

Naturally, when the elevator starts accelerating, you get onto the scale and read you weight. But since the elevator is accelerating, you are actually reading your apparent weight.

Note that by Newton's third law, your apparent weight is the normal force on you. So when the elevator goes into free fall, you "lose contact" with the scale. When you read the scale, the apparent weight you read is 0, which obviously means that you are weightless.

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