• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Zippy Facts Logo

Zippy Facts

Interesting Random Facts

  • Animals
  • Culture
  • Firsts
  • Food
  • Geography
  • Health
  • History
  • Inventions
  • Language
  • Mythology
  • Odds
  • People
  • Religion
  • Science
  • Space
  • Universe
  • World
You are here: Home / Space / What Are Newton’s Laws of Motion and Gravity and How Does Mass Affect an Object’s Gravitational Pull?

What Are Newton’s Laws of Motion and Gravity and How Does Mass Affect an Object’s Gravitational Pull?

February 6, 2020 by Karen Hill

Much of astronomy deals with the physical laws of motion and gravity, which Sir Isaac Newton described in the seventeenth century.
Newton’s laws of motion are:

1. Every body of matter remains at rest until it is moved by an external force.

2. When an external force compels an object to move, that object will move in the same direction as the force and at the same rate.

3. An object acted upon externally will react by exerting an equal force on the external force in the opposite direction.

You can easily test these laws by playing a game of marbles or croquet.

Newton’s laws of gravity state that every particle exerts a force of attraction on every other particle; the power of attraction is based on the mass of each particle and the distance between them.

This power of attraction is gravity, though we really don’t know how or why gravity works.

When an apple falls from a tree, the particles in the apple and in Earth attract each other. The bigger the object, the greater the force, so the apple falls to Earth. Theoretically, Earth responds to the apple’s gravitational pull by rising ever so slightly to meet it.

Motion and gravity always interact. How they do so depends on a given object’s power of motion and its size.

For example, the Sun’s gravitational pull is greater than Earth’s because the star is so much bigger than the planet. However, Earth does not crash into the Sun because it is in motion. It travels fast enough, and is far enough away, to counter the Sun’s pull, but not fast enough, or far enough away, to escape it.

Imagine Earth is a baseball and the Sun is the ground on which you stand. Throw the baseball. The ground’s gravity pulls the ball to the ground.

If you throw the ball faster, it travels farther before the ground’s gravity overpowers it. If the ball (Earth) traveled at 383 miles (612 km) per second, it would never hit the ground (the Sun), but go into orbit. Thrown faster than that, the ball (Earth) would be moving fast enough to escape the ground’s (Sun’s) gravity completely and sail off into space.

Earth’s average orbital speed is 18.5 miles (29.8 km) per second.

Related Facts

  • Who Discovered that Gravity is a Universal force exerted by all objects in the Universe and When?
  • Why Does Gravity Try To Attract All Things To the Center of Earth?
  • How Does the Magnus Effect Cause a Spinning Ball To Curve To the Side and Who Discovered the Phenomenon?
  • Does Gravity Diminish At a Certain Distance From Earth?
  • How High Does a Rocket Have To Go Before It Can Orbit Around Earth?
  • How Did Yi Save the World In Ancient Chinese Mythology and Why Were There Ten Suns?

Filed Under: Space

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

Previous Post: « What Is a Parsec, How Long Is a Parsec, and Who Invented the Parsec As a Unit of Measurement?
Next Post: What Is a Light Year and How Long Does the Light From Our Closest Star Alpha Centauri Take To Reach Earth? »

Footer

Follow

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • Pinterest
  • StumbleUpon
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Categories

Accomplishments Animals Culture Firsts Food Geography Health History Inventions Language Mythology Odds People Religion Science Space Universe World Your Body

About

Zippy Facts empowers the world by serving educational content that is accessible to everyone.

A tribute to growing up, zippyfacts.com showcases interesting and unusual facts about the world.

Our mission is to use technology to facilitate knowledge transfer and sharing.

Copyright © 2020 Zippy Facts

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy