Read the situations given below and answer the questions that follow.
(a) What is meant by apparent weightlessness?
(b) A person is standing in a lift that is moving upward with uniform speed. Describe what happens to the normal force acting on the person when the supporting cable suddenly breaks and the lift starts falling freely.
(c) Astronauts orbiting the Earth in a spacecraft experience weightlessness even though the Earth's gravity still acts on them. Explain why this happens.