We see that the gravitational force between objects increases as the masses of the objects increase. With distance, we see that the strength of gravity decreases if the distance between two objects increases.
It constantly pulls, and the objects constantly speed up. If the mass of one of the objects is doubled, then the force of gravity between them is doubled. Since gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the separation distance between the two interacting objects, more separation distance will result in weaker gravitational forces. Objects with a greater amount of mass will exert a greater degree of gravitational pull, but as the distance between two objects increases, the gravitational force between them lessens.
The second factor that affects the amount of gravity on each object is the distance between the two objects. The larger the distance, the less gravitational force each object exerts on the other. Two major factors, mass and distance, affect the strength of gravitational force on an object. All its mass makes a combined gravitational pull on all the mass in your body.
That's what gives you weight. And if you were on a planet with less mass than Earth, you would weigh less than you do here. You exert the same gravitational force on Earth that it does on you.
Gravity is what holds the planets in orbit around the sun and what keeps the moon in orbit around Earth. The gravitational pull of the moon pulls the seas towards it, causing the ocean tides. Gravity creates stars and planets by pulling together the material from which they are made. Gravity not only pulls on mass but also on light.
Albert Einstein discovered this principle. If you shine a flashlight upwards, the light will grow imperceptibly redder as gravity pulls it. You can't see the change with your eyes, but scientists can measure it. Black holes pack so much mass into such a small volume that their gravity is strong enough to keep anything, even light, from escaping. To illustrate this, use Newton's universal gravitation equation to calculate the force of gravity between the following familiar objects.
Click the buttons to check answers. Today, Newton's law of universal gravitation is a widely accepted theory. It guides the efforts of scientists in their study of planetary orbits. Knowing that all objects exert gravitational influences on each other, the small perturbations in a planet's elliptical motion can be easily explained. As the planet Jupiter approaches the planet Saturn in its orbit, it tends to deviate from its otherwise smooth path; this deviation, or perturbation , is easily explained when considering the effect of the gravitational pull between Saturn and Jupiter.
Newton's comparison of the acceleration of the apple to that of the moon led to a surprisingly simple conclusion about the nature of gravity that is woven into the entire universe.
All objects attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to their distance of separation. Suppose that two objects attract each other with a gravitational force of 16 units. If the distance between the two objects is doubled, what is the new force of attraction between the two objects? If the distance is increased by a factor of 2, then force will be decreased by a factor of 4 2 2.
If the distance between the two objects is reduced in half, then what is the new force of attraction between the two objects? If the distance is decreased by a factor of 2, then force will be increased by a factor of 4 2 2. The new force is then 4 times the original 16 units.
If the mass of both objects was doubled, and if the distance between the objects remained the same, then what would be the new force of attraction between the two objects? If the mass of both objects was doubled, and if the distance between the objects was doubled, then what would be the new force of attraction between the two objects?
But this affect is offset by the doubling of the distance. Doubling the distance would cause the force to be decreased by a factor of 4 2 2 ; the result is that there is no net affect on force.
If the mass of both objects was tripled, and if the distance between the objects was doubled, then what would be the new force of attraction between the two objects? But this affect is partly offset by the doubling of the distance.
Doubling the distance would cause the force to be decreased by a factor of 4 2 2. If the mass of object 1 was doubled, and if the distance between the objects was tripled, then what would be the new force of attraction between the two objects?
If the mass of one object is doubled. But this affect is more than offset by the tripling of the separation distance. Tripling the distance would cause the force to be decreased by a factor of 9 3 2. As a star ages, it is believed to undergo a variety of changes. One of the last phases of a star's life is to gravitationally collapse into a black hole. What will happen to the orbit of the planets of the solar system if our star the Sun shrinks into a black hole?
And of course, this assumes that the planets are unaffected by prior stages of the Sun's evolving stages. The shrinking of the sun into a black hole would not influence the amount of force with which the sun attracted the Earth since neither the mass of the sun nor the distance between the Earth's and sun's centers would change.
Having recently completed her first Physics course, Dawn Well has devised a new business plan based on her teacher's Physics for Better Living theme.
None of this explains why mass or distance affects gravity, though. To do that, we must look at the theories of scientists more recent than Einstein. According to theory, the reason mass is proportional to gravity is because everything with mass emits tiny particles called gravitons.
These gravitons are responsible for gravitational attraction. The more mass, the more gravitons. Graviton theory also accounts for differences in gravitational attraction over distances.
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