A body of weight 72 N moves from the surface of earth at a height half of the radius of earth, then gravitational force exerted on it will be
Gravitational force exerted is the attraction between two masses, determined by their masses and the distance separating their centers.
Class 11 Physics
Gravitation
CBSE EXAM 2024-25
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The gravitational force on a body depends on its weight at the Earth’s surface and its distance from the Earth’s center. At the Earth’s surface, the weight of the body is 72 N. If the body moves to a height equal to half the Earth’s radius above the surface, the distance from the Earth’s center increases, and the gravitational force decreases.
Gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center of the Earth. At the new height, the total distance from the Earth’s center becomes 1.5 times the Earth’s radius. Since the gravitational force weakens with the square of this distance, it decreases significantly compared to the force at the surface.
With this, after considering the relation of the gravitational force with distance, it can be deduced that at this height, the gravitational force acting on the body will be diminished to 32 N. This again illustrates that a body experiencing lesser gravitational force from an Earth as one increases distance from Earth’s core. Furthermore, the nature of forces with the inversely proportional law will govern how a gravitational force functions with changing distances; therefore, this rule is highly valued in both physics and astronomy.