Universal Gravitation - AP Physics 1

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Question

If on earth you have a weight, , what would your new weight be if you were standing on a planet with the same mass as earth, but with half the radius?

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Answer

Your weight is a function of how much force is pulling you down towards the planet, not just your mass. To find force when your standing on a different planet, you would need to use Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.

To compare the forces from each planet, you would set this equation equal to itself.

We then cancel the common terms, in this formula that's the negative sign, (the gravitational constant), and the mass of the earth/planet (because they're the same). After that we can substitute the radius of the new planet for half of the earth radius.

We need to remember that when we square the radius in the Law of Universal Gravitation, we also need to square the , making it . Because the is in the denominator, we take the inverse of it, so you would feel times more force standing on the new planet. Therefore you would have times as much weight.

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