consider a system of three identical point masses each of mass and located at the three vertices of an equal to a given line of sight are each of these three point masses with exert gravitational force on the other two point masses the magnitude of the net gravitational force on any body due to another one
Answers
Explanation:
While an apple might not have struck Sir Isaac Newton’s head as myth suggests, the falling of one did inspire Newton to one of the great discoveries in mechanics: The Law of Universal Gravitation. Pondering why the apple never drops sideways or upwards or any other direction except perpendicular to the ground, Newton realized that the Earth itself must be responsible for the apple’s downward motion.
Theorizing that this force must be proportional to the masses of the two objects involved, and using previous intuition about the inverse-square relationship of the force between the earth and the moon, Newton was able to formulate a general physical law by induction.
The Law of Universal Gravitation states that every point mass attracts every other point mass in the universe by a force pointing in a straight line between the centers-of-mass of both points, and this force is proportional to the masses of the objects and inversely proportional to their separation This attractive force always points inward, from one point to the other. The Law applies to all objects with masses, big or small. Two big objects can be considered as point-like masses, if the distance between them is very large compared to their sizes or if they are spherically symmetric. For these cases the mass of each object can be represented as a point mass located at its center-of-mass.
While Newton was able to articulate his Law of Universal Gravitation and verify it experimentally, he could only calculate the relative gravitational force in comparison to another force. It wasn’t until Henry Cavendish’s verification of the gravitational constant that the Law of Universal Gravitation received its final algebraic form:
F
=
G
Mm
r
2
F=GMmr2
where
F
F represents the force in Newtons,
M
M and
m
m represent the two masses in kilograms, and
r
r represents the separation in meters.
G
G represents the gravitational constant, which has a value of
6.674
⋅
10
−
11
N
(m/kg)
2
6.674⋅10−11N(m/kg)2. Because of the magnitude of
G
G, gravitational force is very small unless large masses are involved.