Honors

Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

I. Gravitation
1. On Earth, all objects seem to experience a force directed downward toward the ground.
This force has been given the name gravity or local gravitation, it is the gravitational
attraction between the object and the Earth.
2. Universal gravitation refers to the gravitational attraction between any two bodies with
mass.
3. If an object is near the surface of a celestial body, either universal or local gravitation
(g) may be used. Away from the surface of a celestial body only universal gravitation may
be used.
Ex 1: Presented below are eight situations involving Margaret, a student from East
Brunswick, NJ. At home, her weight is 525N. Use the following situations to answer the
questions below.

(A) at school in East Brunswick

(B) swimming of the coast of southern Florida

(C) at the bottom of the deepest

ocean on earth (depth: 36,198 ft)

(D) in an airplane at 30,000 ft

(E) sky diving at the equator

(altitude of 5000 ft)

(F) at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro (elevation 19,342 ft)

(G) inside the space station half

way between the earth and the
moon

(H) on the surface of the moon

1. For which of these situations, if any, do you think Margaret has a weight less than
525N? Explain?
2. For which of these situations, if any, do you think Margaret has a weight greater than
525N? Explain?
3. Put these eight situations in order from least to greatest according to Margarets
weight.
4. Are there any situations for which Margaret might be considered weightless? Which
one(s)? Explain.
5. What features of a situation determine Margarets weight?
II. Universal Gravitation
1. The law that describes the force between any two objects with mass at any distance is
referred to as Newtons Law of Universal Gravitation.

Honors
Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

2. The gravitational interaction between two point masses (m1 and m2) depends on their
masses and the distance between their centers of mass.

G is the Universal Gravitation Constant, and its value is about 6.67x10-11N-m2/kg2.

3. The direction of the gravitational force on each point mass is always directly toward the
other point mass and the gravitational force is always an attractive force.

Ex 2. A space capsule is halfway between the earth and the moon. What direction does
the net gravitational force on it point? Why?

b. A satellite is orbiting earth. What direction does the net gravitational force on it point?
c. Does the Sun, the earth, or the moon have weight? Is so, in what direction does each
weight point?
d. What would happen to the gravitational force on you if there were no Moon orbiting
the earth?

Ex3: Three point masses are arranged as shown. Two have the
sane mass M.
a. What is the total gravitational force on mass m?
b. What can you say about the directions of the total
gravitational forces on the two point masses labeled M?
c. Write an expression for the total gravitational force on the
leftmost mass M.

Ex4: Two point masses, each having mass M, are

separated by a distance 2d. A third point mass m is
placed at one of the four numbered locations shown as
xs in the diagram.
a. Compare the total gravitational force of mass m for
each of the two positions. Rank the gravitational forces
in magnitude from smallest to largest.

Honors
Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

b. On the diagram, draw arrows to represent the total gravitational force on m at

each position.
Ex5: Two point masses with masses M and 3M are a distance d apart.
a. Which mass experiences the larger gravitational force?
b. Write an expression for the gravitational force on M.

Ex6: Three point masses are placed on a number

line as shown.
a. Which mass experiences the largest total
gravitational force? Explain/show.

b. Approximately where should a fourth point mass be placed so that the total
gravitational force on it is zero?

Ex7. A point mass m is placed near one or two rods of mass M as shown. (Treat the rods
as point masses.)

a. Which point mass experiences the largest total gravitational force? Explain/show.

b. Put these four arrangements of mass in order from smallest to largest total
gravitational force on m. Explain/show.

c. In arrangement A, which object experiences the larger gravitational force?

d. In arrangement A, if the mass M of the rod is not considered a point mass but is
spread throughout the rod, would the gravitational force on m increase, decrease, or
stay the same? Why?

Useful numbers:

Honors
Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

Ex 8: Compute the forces that the Earth, the Moon and the Sun exert on a 1.00 kg object
located at the surface of the Earth. How do these two forces compare?

Ex 9: Calculate the gravitational force in each of the following situations:

a. two styrofoam balls with a mass if 1.00g and a separation of 10.0cm.

b. an electron (me = 9.11x10-31 kg) and a proton (mp = 1.67x10-27 kg) in a hydrogen atom
with a separation of
5.30x10-11m.

Ex 10: What is the gravitational force exerted on the Earth by the Sun?

Ex 11: Calculate the weight of the earth. Is this an arbitrary number?

Ex 12: Determine the ratio of the acceleration of the moon to the earth as both are
accelerating due to the gravitational force from the Sun. Does the acceleration of either
body depend on its mass? Explain.

Ex 13: Consider the Earth, Sun, and Moon when they are roughly in a straight line, as
shown below. At how many locations is the total gravitational force on a space ship of

Honors
Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

mass m equal to zero? On the diagram, indicate approximately where these locations are.
(Ignore the effects of the other planets.)

III. Fun with a graph of gravitational force

1.
Look at the graph of the Gravitational Force exerted on an object by
a celestial body vs the distance from center of the celestial body.
2. Imagine that the object is a 1kg rock and the celestial body is the
Earth. Imagine the rock is located very, very, very far away from the
center of the Earth. What is the gravitational force between them? How
do we explain this?
3. What happens to the force as the rock approaches the surface of the Earth? How do we
explain this?

4. Where is the rock located when the force is at maximum? How do we explain this?

5. What happens to the force as the rock passes through the surface and moves toward
the center? How do we explain this?
6. What is the gravitational force on the object if the object is located at the center of the
Earth? (maybe its a hunk of molten lava now.)
7. Every celestial body has a force law with its own characteristic shape which depends on
its density and radius. This is the current model for gravitation. Its effects can be
observed on small objects when they are relatively close to a celestial body and at larger
distances for two interacting celestial bodies.
IV. How can a planet be a point mass? Lets have some fun with Newton
Fun information about Mass Shells
Consider a sphere of radius R and mass M made from a very thin material. For
instance, a basketball would be a good approximation to this picture, because the air
inside the basketball has very little mass and the material is relatively thin compared
to the radius of the basketball. This is referred to as a mass shell.
A mass shell has an amazing feature: If the material used to make it is perfectly
uniform, which means that the mass is evenly distributed over the entire surface of the

Honors
Physics
09.1N Universal Gravitation

sphere, then the gravitational force it exerts on another mass is exactly equal to the
force exerted by a point object having the same mass M placed at the center of the
spherical shell. This means that when mass m is close to the spherical shell, even
though different parts of the shell exert very different forces, the overall effect is
identical to the total gravitational force exerted by a point object of mass M.

Another important feature of the mass shell is that when mass m is placed inside the shell,
the force on m is zero, no matter how close m is to the inner surface of the shell.

Note that these are not approximations, but exact mathematical results for an infinitely
thin mass shell. These results will be very useful for understanding the gravitational force
exerted by a celestial body such as the earth and the moon, and they allow you to apply
the Universal Law of Gravitation to situations in which objects are close to the surfaces of
the celestial bodies.

The earth is not a perfect sphere, and its density is not exactly the same
everywhere, but we can still use the idea of a mass shell. Imagine that the
earth is broken up into a large number of thin spherical shells. For an object
above the earth, each shell behaves like a point mass at the center of the
earth. The total mass of all the shells is the total mass of the earth, so the
whole earth is treated like a single