How did Newton proved that the acceleration due to gravity does not depend upon mass of the object?
Answers
Answer:
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
where
F
represents the force in Newtons,
M
and
m
represent the two masses in kilograms, and
r
represents the separation in meters.
G
represents the gravitational constant, which has a value of
6.674
⋅
10
−
11
N
(m/kg)
2
. Because of the magnitude of
G
, gravitational force is very small unless large masses are involved.