I know that free falling objects with different masses fall at the same rate but that does not explain why objects with big masses are heavier to lift? what is gravity anyway I know it isn't a force because otherwise objects with different masses shouldn't fall at the same rate.
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It is treated as a force.
You might be confused by thinking that the value of the force is fixed for every object on Earth and then asking yourself what the acceleration would be, but that's not the case. Larger objects experience a larger gravitational force than smaller objects because gravity is thought to act between every particle of the Earth with every particle of the object. E.g. An object with twice the mass will experience twice the force according to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. $$F=G\frac{m_{1}m_{2}}{r^{2}}$$
So if m1 is the mass of the Earth and m2 of the object, then one can see that the gravitational acceleration only depends on the distance from the Earth as r, and not on the objects mass: $$a_{g}=G\frac{m_{1}}{r^{2}}$$
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$\begingroup$ Thank you. that helps me picture it. so every object gets pulled with a force proportional to its mass. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 9:05