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In classical mechanics, a gravitational field is a physical quantity. [5] A gravitational field can be defined using Newton's law of universal gravitation. Determined in this way, the gravitational field g around a single particle of mass M is a vector field consisting at every point of a vector pointing directly towards the particle. The ...
Gravimetry is the measurement of the strength of a gravitational field. Gravimetry may be used when either the magnitude of a gravitational field or the properties of matter responsible for its creation are of interest. The study of gravity changes belongs to geodynamics.
This formulation is dependent on the objects causing the field. The field has units of acceleration; in SI, this is m/s 2. Gravitational fields are also conservative; that is, the work done by gravity from one position to another is path-independent. This has the consequence that there exists a gravitational potential field V(r) such that
It is defined so that the gravitational force experienced by a particle is equal to the mass of the particle multiplied by the gravitational field at that point. Gravitational flux is a surface integral of the gravitational field over a closed surface, analogous to how magnetic flux is a surface integral of the magnetic field. Gauss's law for ...
Vector field (blue) and its associated scalar potential field (red). Point P between earth and moon is the point of equilibrium. In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. [6]
The Schwarzschild radius was named after the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, who calculated this exact solution for the theory of general relativity in 1916. The Schwarzschild radius is given as =, where G is the gravitational constant, M is the object mass, and c is the speed of light.
This quantity is sometimes referred to informally as little g (in contrast, the gravitational constant G is referred to as big G). The precise strength of Earth's gravity varies with location. The agreed-upon value for standard gravity is 9.80665 m/s 2 (32.1740 ft/s 2) by definition. [4]
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is the work that an outside agent must do in order to quasi-statically bring the masses together (which is therefore, exactly opposite the work done by the gravitational field on the masses): = = where is the displacement vector of the mass, is gravitational force acting on it and denotes scalar product.