Informational Articals - Gravity - Laws of Gravity

The Law of Gravity was developed by Sir Isaac Newton after the various experiments he conducted regarding this concept. To quote Newton “Each particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.” In more simple terms – what goes up must come down.

There are a couple of versions of how he got interested in this area. Some say he was sitting underneath an apple tree when one fell on his head. Others say he saw apples on the ground under the tree and wanted to find out more. Still other accounts say Newton was simply impressed with the works of Galileo and he wanted to learn more.

Newton was the first to want develop theories he could test about the enormous impact gravity had, not just on apples and other objects on Earth but in relation so the planets, the sun, and the moon. What Newton soon discovered is that each object in the entire Universe is attracted to others due to a force that we are unable to see with the naked eye. Both the mass and the weight of the object affect the gravitational pull it has.

Even though some of the concepts in the Law of Gravity were modified by Einstein, Newton still is given credit for his discoveries. This is because of the fact that Einstein was only able to learn more about the Laws of Gravity and how they related to the various planets with the assistance of the foundation Newton had already laid out for him.

It was quite an exciting discovery to realize that areas of outer space including the moon don’t have enough gravitational pull to keep things in place as they are on Earth. This discovery was very significant in preparing astronauts for their first space travel to the moon. It is believed that the Law of gravity applies to each planet in the solar system differently. Since we have not been able to travel to other planets yet it is possible that some of them have the same gravitational pull as Earth.