Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[9] [10] [11] In the 4th century BC, Greek philosopher Aristotle taught that there is no effect or motion without a cause. The cause of the downward natural motion of heavy bodies, such as the classical elements of earth and water, was related to their nature (gravity), which caused them to move downward toward the center of the universe.
Gravity on the Earth's surface varies by around 0.7%, from 9.7639 m/s 2 on the Nevado Huascarán mountain in Peru to 9.8337 m/s 2 at the surface of the Arctic Ocean. [6] In large cities, it ranges from 9.7806 m/s 2 [ 7 ] in Kuala Lumpur , Mexico City , and Singapore to 9.825 m/s 2 in Oslo and Helsinki .
In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas 'weight' [1]) is a fundamental interaction primarily observed as a mutual attraction between all things that have mass.Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 10 38 times weaker than the strong interaction, 10 36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, and 10 29 times weaker than the weak interaction.
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.
Newton proposed that the orbits of planets about the Sun are largely elliptical because the Sun's gravitation is dominant; to first approximation, the presence of the other planets can be ignored. By analogy, the elliptical orbit of the Moon about the Earth was dominated by the Earth's gravity; to first approximation, the Sun's gravity and ...
A common misconception occurs between centre of mass and centre of gravity.They are defined in similar ways but are not exactly the same quantity. Centre of mass is the mathematical description of placing all the mass in the region considered to one position, centre of gravity is a real physical quantity, the point of a body where the gravitational force acts.
A key point is that, on large scales, our universe appears to be constructed along very simple lines: all current observations suggest that, on average, the structure of the cosmos should be approximately the same, regardless of an observer's location or direction of observation: the universe is approximately homogeneous and isotropic. Such ...
It is a constant defined by standard as 9.806 65 m/s 2 (about 32.174 05 ft/s 2). This value was established by the third General Conference on Weights and Measures (1901, CR 70) and used to define the standard weight of an object as the product of its mass and this nominal acceleration .