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The first test of Newton's law of gravitation between masses in the laboratory was the Cavendish experiment conducted by the British scientist Henry Cavendish in 1798. [5] It took place 111 years after the publication of Newton's Principia and approximately 71 years after his death.
The force of gravity experienced by objects on Earth's surface is the vector sum of two forces: [7] (a) The gravitational attraction in accordance with Newton's universal law of gravitation, and (b) the centrifugal force, which results from the choice of an earthbound, rotating frame of reference.
According to Newton's law of universal gravitation, the magnitude of the attractive force (F) between two bodies each with a spherically symmetric density distribution is directly proportional to the product of their masses, m 1 and m 2, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance, r, directed along the line connecting their centres of mass: =.
The existence of the gravitational constant was explored by various researchers from the mid-17th century, helping Isaac Newton formulate his law of universal gravitation. Newton's classical mechanics were superseded in the early 20th century, when Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity.
Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes classical gravity, can be seen as a prediction of general relativity for the almost flat spacetime geometry around stationary mass distributions. Some predictions of general relativity, however, are beyond Newton's law of universal gravitation in classical physics.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's law of universal gravitation had been accepted for more than two hundred years as a valid description of the gravitational force between masses. In Newton's model, gravity is the result of an attractive force between massive objects.
Coulomb's law for the electric force between two stationary, electrically charged bodies has much the same mathematical form as Newton's law of universal gravitation: the force is proportional to the product of the charges, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and directed along the straight line between them.
1619 – Johannes Kepler unveils his third law of planetary motion. [4] 1665-66 – Isaac Newton introduces an inverse-square law of universal gravitation uniting terrestrial and celestial theories of motion and uses it to predict the orbit of the Moon and the parabolic arc of projectiles (the latter using his generalization of the binomial ...