Gravitational fields Flashcards
Use Newton's law of gravitation. Compare electric and gravitational fields. Use formula for gravitational field due to a point mass.
What is the fundamental underlying force that drives the current theories for the formation of galaxies stars and planets?
Gravity, the main idea behind it is that every particle with mass attracts every other particle with mass.
What does accrete mean?
Grow by accumulation or coalescence. Clumps of matter continuing to attract other nearby particles to become planets and stars.
What particles feel a force when it is in a gravitational field?
Particles that have mass. Like electric fields, massive particles generate a radial gravitational field around itself. But unlike electric fields, gravity is always attractive.
What is the force that a body will feel in a gravitational field?
The strength of the gravitational field(g) multiplied by the amount of mass.
How quickly would a massive particle accelerate?
By equating the 2 equations F=ma and F=mg, we find that a=g.
So the acceleration due to gravity is the same as the gravitational field strength.
On Earth, g=9.81 ms^-2 or 9.81 Nkg^-1
Describe the field produced by a point mass.
As gravity is always attractive, the field produced by a point mass will be radial in shape and the field lines will always point toward the mass.
How is (-GMm)/r^2=mg?
Because these two expressions are calculating the same force.
As a result, we can find that the field strength is independent of the mass being acted upon.
Although expressions for calculations in electric and gravitational fields may be quite simillar, name a few differences between them.
While the similarities come from the fact that both types of fields are radial from a point.
The symbols used to represent the quantities and the constants of proportionality differ for these fields alongside the fact that gravitational fields are always attractive and the electric field is significantly stronger than the gravitational field.
