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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.
In classical mechanics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. A freely falling object may not necessarily be falling down in the vertical direction. If the common definition of the word "fall" is used, an object moving upwards is not considered to be falling, but using scientific definitions, if it is ...
The gravitational acceleration vector depends only on how massive the field source is and on the distance 'r' to the sample mass . It does not depend on the magnitude of the small sample mass. This model represents the "far-field" gravitational acceleration associated with a massive body.
For free bodies, the specific force is the cause of, and a measure of, the body's proper acceleration. The acceleration of an object free falling towards the earth depends on the reference frame (it disappears in the free-fall frame, also called the inertial frame), but any g-force "acceleration" will be present in all frames.
The free-fall time is the characteristic time that would take a body to collapse under its own gravitational attraction, if no other forces existed to oppose the collapse.. As such, it plays a fundamental role in setting the timescale for a wide variety of astrophysical processes—from star formation to helioseismology to supernovae—in which gravity plays a dominant ro
In classical mechanics, for a body with constant mass, the (vector) acceleration of the body's center of mass is proportional to the net force vector (i.e. sum of all forces) acting on it (Newton's second law): = =, where F is the net force acting on the body, m is the mass of the body, and a is the center-of-mass acceleration.
These equations, together with the geodesic equation, [8] which dictates how freely falling matter moves through spacetime, form the core of the mathematical formulation of general relativity. The EFE is a tensor equation relating a set of symmetric 4 × 4 tensors .
In other words, a freely moving or falling particle always moves along a geodesic. In general relativity, gravity can be regarded as not a force but a consequence of a curved spacetime geometry where the source of curvature is the stress–energy tensor (representing matter, for instance). Thus, for example, the path of a planet orbiting a star ...