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A set of equations describing the trajectories of objects subject to a constant gravitational force under normal Earth-bound conditions.Assuming constant acceleration g due to Earth's gravity, Newton's law of universal gravitation simplifies to F = mg, where F is the force exerted on a mass m by the Earth's gravitational field of strength g.
Newton's law of gravitation resembles Coulomb's law of electrical forces, which is used to calculate the magnitude of the electrical force arising between two charged bodies. Both are inverse-square laws, where force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. Coulomb's law has charge in place of mass and a ...
where r is the distance between the centre of the Earth and the body (see below), and here we take to be the mass of the Earth and m to be the mass of the body. Additionally, Newton's second law, F = ma, where m is mass and a is acceleration, here tells us that =
In Newton's law, it is the proportionality constant connecting the gravitational force between two bodies with the product of their masses and the inverse square of their distance. In the Einstein field equations , it quantifies the relation between the geometry of spacetime and the energy–momentum tensor (also referred to as the stress ...
In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses that orbit each other in space and calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation. [1]
Newton's laws are often stated in terms of point or particle masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between bodies is much larger than the size of each.
The experimental observation that all objects in free fall accelerate at the same rate, as noted by Galileo and then embodied in Newton's theory as the equality of gravitational and inertial masses, and later confirmed to high accuracy by modern forms of the Eötvös experiment, is the basis of the equivalence principle, from which basis ...
Because all of the mass is located at the same angle with respect to the x-axis, and the distance between the points on the ring is the same distance as before, the gravitational field in the x-direction at point due to the ring is the same as a point mass located at a point units above the y-axis: = (+) /