Is it correct to consider 'g' as a constant when an
object is taken far away from the earth?
Answers
Answer:
noooooooooooooooooooooooo
Explanation:
n projectile motion
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blueleaf avatar for user Paolo Miguel Bartolo
Paolo Miguel Bartolo
7 years ago
Posted 7 years ago. Direct link to Paolo Miguel Bartolo's post “This video got me thinking. Suppose that my friend...”
This video got me thinking. Suppose that my friend and I are tunneling downwards towards the Earth's center. As we proceed, I reason out that we should start to weigh less, since some of the Earth's mass that used to be beneath us is now "above" us (but not directly above us, of course) and is exerting a force that starts to contradict the force pulling us towards the Earth's center. Yet my friend reasons out that we should start to weigh more since according to Newton's law of universal gravitation, which states that F = G(m1)(m2)/r^2, the closer we get to Earth's center, the smaller the distance between the centers of our masses and of the Earth, which translates to a greater force.
We then think about what would happen to our weights when we reach the Earth's center. I say that we should become weightless, since there are equal amounts of mass pulling us in all directions, and therefore all forces should cancel out (we assumed that the Earth is a perfect sphere). My friend says, "No. Since the distance between the centers of our masses and of the Earth is zero, we would experience... infinite force?"