Explain Newton’s law of gravitation?
Difficulty: Medium
Law of gravitation:
Everybody in the universe attracts every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
Explanation:
Consider two bodies of masses m1 and m2. The distance between the centers of masses is d.
According to the law of gravitation, the gravitational force of attraction F with which the two masses m1 and m2 separated by a distance d attract each other is given by:
$F \: \alpha \: m_{1}m_{2}$ …………… (i)
$F \alpha\frac{1}{d^{2}}$…………… (ii)
By combining (i) and (ii) we get
$F \: \alpha \:\frac{m_{1}m_{2}}{d^{2}}$
or
$F=G \: \frac{m_{1}m_{2}}{d^{2}}$
The universal constant of gravitation (G):
Here G is the proportionality constant. It is called the universal constant of gravitation. Its value is the same everywhere.
In SI units the value of G is $6.673\times10^{-11}\: Nm^2{kg^{-2}}$
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