LAW OF GRAVITY

WHO DISCOVERED GRAVITATIONAL LAW?

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician and

physicist who lived from 1642-1727
The legend is that Newton discovered gravity when he
saw a falling apple while thinking about the forces of
nature.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH THE APPLE?

• Probably the more correct version of the

story is that Newton, upon observing an
apple fall from a tree, began to think along
the following lines: The apple is
accelerated, since its velocity changes
from zero as it is hanging on the tree and
moves toward the ground.
• Thus, by Newton there must be a force that acts on the
apple to cause this acceleration. Let's call this force
"gravity", and the associated acceleration the . Then
imagine the apple tree is twice as high. Again, we
expect the apple to be accelerated toward the ground,
so this suggests that this force that we call gravity
reaches to the top of the tallest apple tree.
SIR ISAAC'S MOST EXCELLENT IDEA

• Newton knew that the force which caused the

apple's acceleration (gravity) must be dependent
upon the mass of the apple. And since the force
acting to cause the apple's downward
acceleration also causes the earth's upward
acceleration , that force must also depend upon
the mass of the earth.
• So for Newton, the force of gravity acting
between the earth and any other object is
directly proportional to the mass of the earth,
directly proportional to the mass of the object,
and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance which separates the centers of the
earth and the object.
GRAVITY
• A force:The natural pull of objects
toward each other
G= UNIVERSAL GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT
 F- force of gravity
G- gravitational constant
m1- mass of one object
m2- mass of other object
d- distance between the two objects