Gravitation

Many of the foundations of classical mechanics were first discovered when philosophers (early
scientists and mathematicians) tried to explain the motion of planets and stars. Newton is most
famous for unifying the motion of “heavenly” bodies with those on earth (an apple). Newton’s
law of Universal Gravitation has now been superseded by Einstein’s General Relativity, but just
as earlier, Newton’s approximation is very good in many situations and thus very worthy of
study.

Gm1m2
The classical law of gravitation is often written as Fgravity  rˆ , where G is a universal
r2
constant equal to 6.67 x 10-11 N kg-2 m2 , and r is the separation between the masses. However
this is not precise enough for us. Consider two spherical masses, m1  m2 , and the force of
gravity between them

r2,1  r2  r1

m1
r̂2,1 Fon 2 by 1 m2

r1 r2

Gm1m2
We want to know the forced placed on m2 by m1 or F2,1 . This is equal to F2,1  rˆ2,1
r2
where r̂21 is the unit vector that points from m1 to m2 . (The way to remember the order of the
subscripts is “final minus initial”.) The negative sign indicates that the force is attractive and
puts the force in the opposite direction from the unit vector. So knowing the force placed on m2
by m1 , what about the converse, the force placed on m1 by m2 , or F12 ? Clearly from the
symmetry of the expression these forces are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction. (This
is an example of Newton’s third laws that states that if an object places a force on another, then it
experiences an equal and opposite placed by the other on it. Newton’s third law is by far the
most complicated of his three to understand and apply correctly. An untold number of
introductory physics students have gotten themselves tied up in knots trying to figure out where
to put the reaction force. You have been forewarned! One hint, the reaction force is never put
on the object experiencing the original force.)

Taking a closer look at the figure above raises an important question. r was defined to be the
distance between the centers of the spherical objects. Why was this selected; why not the surface
–to-surface distance? Or what happens when the object is not spherical? The Universal Law of
Gravitation is well defined for point masses. This is a good approximation when the objects are
very far apart, such that their radii are much smaller than the separation. But in the figure above
that is not the case. The separation is only ~10 times the radii of the masses. Are we making a
poor approximation?

To examine this problem, consider the gravitational attraction between a point mass, m , and an
arbitrary extended object, M . There is no restriction placed on the separation between the two.

How can we use the Universal Law of Gravitation to determine the force Fm, M that body M puts
on m ? You may be thinking that you need to find the “Center of Mass, or CM” of object M ,
but this is not correct. (Although it is a thoughtful guess and the approach to take is similar to
that taken to find the CM.) Consider a small portion of mass M , for concreteness a very small
cube somewhere within the body.

m

The Universal Law of Gravitation allows us to find the force between the small cube and mass
mm
m . Specifically, it is Fm,m1  G 2 1 rˆm,m1 where m1 is the mass of the cube and r is the
r
distance between the cube and m . r is now well defined because the positions of m and m1
are precise. Of course, this can be done for a second point m2
 Fm,m2

Fm,m1

Now the net force on the point mass m from both m1 and m2 is the just the simple vector
addition of the individual forces, Fnet  Fm,m1  Fm,m2

Fnetfrom m1 and m2

You can know see where this is going. Consider dicing the whole of the extended object M into
little pieces. (The shape of the little pieces is arbitrary, however sometimes the symmetry of the
object suggests a shape.) Then the net force on m would be given by,

mmi
Fm, M   G rˆm,i . If we know the density  (r ) of the extended object as a function of
i ri 2
position then the amount of mass in each little piece is mi   (ri )Vi and the next force
 (ri )Vi
becomes: Fm, M  Gm rˆm,i . Now this is an expression that can be used on a
i ri 2
computer to find the net force placed by M on m . The computer can be programmed to sum
over a vast number of little boxes using the appropriate density, distance and direction.
However, mathematically it is very useful to take the limit as the number of boxes goes to
infinity. Taking origin of the coordinate system to be at the point mass, the expression becomes
  (r )V   (r )
Fm, M  Gm lim  i 2 i rˆm,i   Gm  dV 2 rˆ . This is an integral over the volume
 i  i ri  r
M

of the extended object, with r being a vector that originates at the location of the point mass and
terminates within mass M . You can imagine the end of this vector being moved all over the
 (r )
extent of M as it is being normalized, multiplied by 2 and summed up.
r

If this looks complicated to you, you are right, it can be. You will have a chance to do this type
of integral in Calc III. For the time being it is enough to know in principle how it is done and be
able to do it numerically.

It is interesting to note that because the total force depends linearly on the point mass m , it is
often convenient to talk about the force that would be placed on a test particle of mass m as
Fm, M (r )
Fm, M  gm or conversely define g M (r )  . This is the concept of a field, in this case the
m
“gravitational field”. The field from mass M exists without the presence of the second particle
to experience it. One way to picture the gravitational field is a collection of arrows pointing in
the direction that a test mass would accelerate if it were placed at a location and having a
magnitude given by its acceleration. Here is a rather poor rendition
  (r )  r  r '
For each point in space you would need to find g M (r )  G  dV  , where the
M (r  r ) 2
 r  r '
integral is over the “primed” variables r  and dV  . This need not be easy, but it can be done,
and is a very useful concept. What is important now is that you begin to think about such a
gravitational field as arrows existing in space around all massive objects and that these arrows
tell you the acceleration that would occur if a test mass was placed there.

We have come a long way in our discussion of gravity, but have not completely answered our
question about how to handle the gravitational attraction between extended objects. We know
that in general the force involves summing up contributions from all over the objects.
Considering the original situation, this looks quite difficult. We even have to sum over two
objects ! There must be a way out…

r2,1  r2  r1

m1
r̂2,1 Fon 2 by 1 m2

r1 r2

and there is, but only in a very special case.