# Tagged Questions

The Newtonian model of gravity in which the force between two objects is given by GMm/r^2.

7answers
3k views

### Does juggling balls reduce the total weight of the juggler and balls?

A friend offered me a brain teaser to which the solution involves a $195$ pound man juggling two $3$-pound balls to traverse a bridge having a maximum capacity of only $200$ pounds. He explained that ...
9answers
7k views

### Don't heavier objects actually fall faster because they exert their own gravity?

The common understanding is that, setting air resistance aside, all objects dropped to Earth fall at the same rate. This is often demonstrated through the thought experiment of cutting a large object ...
7answers
3k views

### Why is the Earth so fat?

I made a naive calculation of the height of Earth's equatorial bulge and found that it should be about 10km. The true height is about 20km. My question is: why is there this discrepancy? The ...
1answer
704 views

### Why does it take so long to get to the ISS?

I don't understand why when first launched Space X's Dragon capsule had to orbit the Earth many times in order to match up with the ISS? Was this purely to match it's speed, or to get closer (as in ...
4answers
1k views

### Would you be weightless at the center of the Earth?

If you could travel to the center of the Earth (or any planet), would you be weightless there?
4answers
587 views

### Staying in orbit - but doesn't any perturbation start a positive feedback?

I am not a physicist; I am a software engineer. While trying to fall asleep recently, I started thinking about the following. There are many explanations online of how any object stays in orbit. The ...
8answers
12k views

### Why doesn't the Moon fall upon Earth?

Why doesn't the Moon, or for that matter anything rotating another larger body, ever fall into the larger body?
9answers
2k views

### Why do space crafts take off with rockets instead of just ascending like an aircraft until they reach space?

I guess it's not a very educated question, but I never quite understood why spacecrafts have to shoot up and can't just reach space by simply continuing an upwards ascent like an airplane.
5answers
1k views

### Why does the moon face earth with the same side?

I know this is an astronomy question, but no such stackexchange site exists. So here I am, asking about the physics of the solar system. I know that the rotation period of the moon equals its ...
9answers
3k views

### Why are orbits elliptical?

Almost all of the orbits of planets and other celestial bodies are elliptical, not circular. Is this due to gravitational pull by other nearby massive bodies? If this was the case a two body system ...
4answers
501 views

### Why are so many forces explainable using inverse squares when space is three dimensional?

It seems paradoxical that the strength of so many phenomena (Newtonian gravity, Coulomb force) are calculable by the inverse square of distance. However, since volume is determined by three ...
5answers
2k views

### Why do we always see the same side of the Moon?

I am puzzled why we always see the same side of the Moon even though it is rotating around its own axis apart from revolving around the earth. Shouldn't this only be possible if the Moon is not ...
4answers
495 views

### Anti-gravity in an infinite lattice of point masses

Another interesting infinite lattice problem I found while watching a physics documentary. Imagine an infinite square lattice of point masses, subject to gravity. The masses involved are all $m$ and ...
1answer
466 views

### James Webb Space Telescope's halo orbit at Lagrange point L2

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to be launched in 2018 and operate in the L2 vicinity, about 1.5 million km from Earth. It will be placed in a halo orbit around the unstable L2 ...
3answers
804 views

### Significance of the second focus in elliptical orbits

1.In classical mechanics, using Newton's laws, the ellipticity of orbits is derived. It is also said that the center of mass is at one of the foci. 2.Each body will orbit the center of the mass of ...
3answers
2k views

### Why are Saturn's rings so thin?

Take a look at this picture (from APOD http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110308.html): I presume that rocks within rings smash each other. Below the picture there is a note which says that Saturn's rings ...
7answers
2k views

### Would it help if you jump inside a free falling elevator?

Imagine you're trapped inside a free falling elevator. Would you decrease your impact impulse by jumping during the fall? When?
5answers
937 views

### The square in the Newton's law of universal gravitation is really a square?

When I was in the university (in the late 90s, circa 1995) I was told there had been research investigating the $2$ (the square of distance) in the Newton's law of universal gravitation. ...
4answers
568 views

### Is Feynman's explanation of how the moon stays in orbit wrong?

Yesterday, I understood what it means to say that the moon is constantly falling (from a lecture by Richard Feynman). In the picture below there is the moon in green which is orbiting the earth in ...
4answers
968 views

### Acceleration of two falling objects with identical form and air drag but different masses

I have a theoretical question that has been bugging me and my peers for weeks now - and we have yet to settle on a concrete answer. Imagine two balloons, one is filled with air, one with concrete. ...
3answers
456 views

### Gravity in other dimensions than 3 and stable orbits

I have heard from here that stable orbits (ones that require a large amount of force to push it significantly out of it's elliptical path) can only exist in a three spatial dimensions because gravity ...
4answers
223 views

### Two planets in same orbit - not planets?

Let us pretend for a moment that there are two identical planets that are exactly opposite their star from each other and are the same distance from said star. (This would make them, at all times, ...
1answer
272 views

### Apollo and orbital mechanics: orbital decay if the Trans Earth Injection (TEI) burn had failed

I'm reading Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13) and Jeffrey Kluger's book Apollo 13, which is a fantastic read about a long past era I only have kindergarten memories of. On page 54 there is a paragraph that ...
3answers
429 views

### How do we explain accelerated motion in Newtonian physics and in modern physics?

Maybe my question will seem stupid, but I am not a physicist so I have some problems understanding a classic Newtonian experiment: in the bucket experiment, why does he have to introduce the absolute ...
3answers
1k views

### Why does the moon drift away from earth?

I once saw on TV that the moon is slowly drifting away from the earth, something like an inch a year. In relation to that the day on earth what also increase in time. I wonder why is that?
6answers
1k views

### Is Newton's Law of Gravity consistent with General Relativity?

By 'Newton's Law of Gravity', I am referring to The magnitude of the force of gravity is proportional to the product of the mass of the two objects and inversely proportional to their distance ...
3answers
293 views

### Is it possible that 5 planets can revolve around a single star in a single orbit?

I'm writing a novel and I'm quite confused if this system could be possible in the real universe. Is it possible that a system exist, where 5 identical planets which could be of same characteristics ...
1answer
1k views

### What is the maximum efficiency of a trebuchet?

Using purely gravitational potential energy, what is the highest efficiency one can achieve with a trebuchet counter-weight type of machine? Efficiency defined here as transformation of potential ...
4answers
467 views

### What causes a soccer ball to follow a curved path?

Soccer players kick the ball in a linear kick, though you find it to turn sideways, not even in one direction. Just mid air it changes that curve's direction. Any physical explanation? Maybe this ...
1answer
124 views

### Gravitationally bound systems in an expanding universe

This isn't yet a complete question; rather, I'm looking for a qual-level question and answer describing a gravitationally bound system in an expanding universe. Since it's qual level, this needs a ...
10answers
956 views

### Is the distance between the sun and the earth increasing?

M = mass of the sun m = mass of the earth r = distance between the earth and the sun The sun is converting mass into energy by nuclear fusion. \$F = \frac{GMm}{r^2} = \frac{mv^2}{r} \rightarrow r ...
7answers
1k views

### How does Newtonian gravitation conflict with special relativity?

In the Wikipedia article Classical Field Theory (Gravitation), it says After Newtonian gravitation was found to be inconsistent with special relativity, . . . I don't see how Newtonian ...
7answers
1k views

### How does the earth move?

My son who is 5 years old is asking me a question about how the earth moves around the sun. What answer should I give him?
4answers
326 views

### What's the exact gravitational force between spherically symmetric masses?

Consider spherical symmetric$^1$ masses of radii $R_1$ and $R_2$, with spherical symmetric density distributions $\rho_1(r_1)$ and $\rho_2(r_2)$, and with a distance between the centers of the spheres ...
6answers
533 views

### When driving uphill why can't I reach a velocity that I would have been able to maintain if I started with it?

Consider these two situations when driving on a long straight road uphill: Starting at a high velocity $v_h$, which the car is able to maintain. Starting at a lower velocity $v_l$, and then trying ...
4answers
120 views

### Integrating radial free fall in Newtonian gravity

I thought this would be a simple question, but I'm having trouble figuring it out. Not a homework assignment btw. I am a physics student and am just genuinely interested in physics problems involving ...
2answers
186 views

### Is the gravitational potential of a planet in orbit always equal to minus the squared velocity?

Say a planet (mass $m$) is orbiting a star (mass $M$) in a perfect circle, so it is in circular motion. $F=ma$ and the gravitational force between two masses $F=\frac{GMm}{r^2}$ so ...
3answers
199 views

### The feasibility of a satellite orbiting at a fixed time

I was speaking with some friends of mine, one of whom was an aerospace engineer. He posited the infeasibility of a hypothetical "Margaritaville Satellite" that orbited earth in such a way that ...
5answers
290 views

### Intuitive explanation of the inverse square power $\frac{1}{r^2}$ in Newton's law of gravity

Is there an intuitive explanation why it is plausible that the gravitational force which acts between two point masses is proportional to the inverse square of the distance $r$ between the masses (and ...
2answers
150 views

### Is it possible to use a balloon to float so high in the atmosphere that you can be gravitationally pulled towards a satellite?

A recent joke on the comedy panel show 8 out of 10 cats prompted this question. I'm pretty sure the answer's no, but hopefully someone can surprise me. If you put a person in a balloon, such that ...
4answers
612 views

### Can gravity be shielded, like electromagnetism?

If I remember well, they said that it can't, but I do not know why. Yes, I meant if gravity can be shielded using something like a Faraday cage (or something else?). Thank you.
1answer
142 views

### How would a large a mass be stable at the Earth Sun L4 or L5 point?

I've heard about the Trojan asteroids and there is the famous idea of putting a space colony at one of these points, but the explanations I see for how something is stable at those points it they are ...
1answer
421 views

### The gravitational potential of ellipsoid

In the literature (Kirchhoff G. - Mechanic (1897), Lecture 18 or Lamb, H. - Hydrodynamics (1879)) one can find the following analytical closed form expression for the gravitational potential of ...
11answers
1k views

### Why do we say that the earth moves around the sun?

In history we are taught that the Catholic Church was wrong, because the Sun does not move around the Earth, instead the Earth moves around the Sun. But then in physics we learn that movement is ...
2answers
199 views

### Why is there this asymmetry between the two foci of an orbital ellipse?

Why does the Earth revolve with the Sun at one of its foci? Does the other focus do nothing? Why is there this asymmetry in our solar system?
4answers
2k views

### The Time That 2 Masses Will Collide Due To Newtonian Gravity

My friend and I have been wracking our heads with this one for the past 3 hours... We have 2 point masses, $m$ and $M$ in a perfect world separated by radius r. Starting from rest, they both begin to ...
2answers
80 views

### Gravitational potential outside Lagrangian points or Lagrange points

The diagram in Why are L4 and L5 lagrangian points stable? shows that the gravitational potential decreases outside the ring of Lagrange points — this image shows it even more clearly: If I ...
2answers
642 views

### Calculating gravity when taking into account the change of gravitational force

This is a problem that has bothered me for a couple of weeks now, and I can't seem to wrap my head around it and understand it. Let's say we have a planet with a mass of m. We also have an object of ...
3answers
270 views

### the collision of Phobos

Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Both are irregular and are believed to have been captured from the nearby asteroid belt. Phobos always shows the same face to Mars because of tidal forces ...
3answers
230 views

### Differences between the gravitational constants $G$ and $g$?

There's a formula (described by Sir Isaac Newton) that gives the force acting between two objects: $$F = \frac{Gm_1m_2}{r^2}$$ And then there's a formula for weight of an object $$w = mg$$ My ...
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