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The divergence of a vector field which is the resultant of radial inverse-square law fields with respect to one or more sources is proportional to the strength of the local sources, and hence zero outside sources. Newton's law of universal gravitation follows an inverse-square law, as do the effects of electric, light, sound, and radiation ...
Coulomb's inverse-square law, or simply Coulomb's law, is an experimental law [1] of physics that calculates the amount of force between two electrically charged particles at rest. This electric force is conventionally called the electrostatic force or Coulomb force . [ 2 ]
In addition, Newton had formulated, in Propositions 43–45 of Book 1 [16] and associated sections of Book 3, a sensitive test of the accuracy of the inverse square law, in which he showed that only where the law of force is calculated as the inverse square of the distance will the directions of orientation of the planets' orbital ellipses stay ...
According to this equation, the second force F 2 (r) is obtained by scaling the first force and changing its argument, as well as by adding inverse-square and inverse-cube central forces. For comparison, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits corresponds to the case a = 1 and b = 0, so that r 1 = r 2. In this case, the original force is not ...
Meanwhile, Newton, though he explained his (geometrical) form of calculus in Section I of Book I of the Principia of 1687, [3] did not explain his eventual fluxional notation for the calculus [4] in print until 1693 (in part) and 1704 (in full). The prevailing opinion in the 18th century was against Leibniz (in Britain, not in the German ...
Problem 4 then explores, for the case of an inverse-square law of centripetal force, how to determine the orbital ellipse for a given starting position, speed, and direction of the orbiting body. Newton points out here, that if the speed is high enough, the orbit is no longer an ellipse, but is instead a parabola or hyperbola .
So the inverse square law for planetary accelerations applies throughout the entire Solar System. The inverse square law is a differential equation. The solutions to this differential equation include the Keplerian motions, as shown, but they also include motions where the orbit is a hyperbola or parabola or a straight line. (See Kepler orbit.)
The inverse square law behind the Kepler problem is the most important central force law. [1]: 92 The Kepler problem is important in celestial mechanics, since Newtonian gravity obeys an inverse square law. Examples include a satellite moving about a planet, a planet about its sun, or two binary stars about each other.