GRAVITY: oh well!! We are all familiar with this …. Thing.
But I want you to ask yourself if you really know what gravity? Permit me to
use another approach.
One
Sunny good day, Newton
was chilling up under the tree. “Good lord!” Newton cursed softly under his breath. His
bothersome wench of an aunt is calling on him for farm work again. ‘Omo!!
Person no fit die abeg!! Make I chill a little’, He seemed to think (ah!! For
him naija mind of course!!). suddenly, he felt a sharp brief little pain on an
area of his head, signifying a point force. ‘Ogini?. Ah!! I could use an apple’,
he muttered silently. He bit away into the apple. After a few bites, he
remembered how the apple fell. But why did the apple fall directly towards the
center of the earth? He wondered.Perhaps if Newton didn’t bother to ask, we might have
had a delay in time for the launch of the space missions. I mean, another
scientist would have done it, but not the time Newton did it.
So,
what did Newton
say about gravity? ………… sorry, took a glass of water. Before we talk about what
Newton thought
and or deduced about gravity, let us go back in history (yay!! That boring
course is useful after all). Galileo
(1564 – 1642) demonstrated, on the tower
of Pisa took two
materials of the same weight but different materials and dropped them
simultaneously from the tower. At this juncture, lemme ask, if you take 10kg of
feather and 10kg of metal, which one would fall first? Hahahaha…..metal you
say? Okay. You may be right. Maybe or maybe not!! ANYWAY, Galileo did this so
that he would prove Aristotle was wrong. What was the outcome of the
experiment? He succeeded actually and proved Aristotle wrong. Back to the
question I asked. Well, they both would drop AT THE SAME TIME. Just as you were
thinking, Aristotle thought so over a thousand years ago. He said that the
metal would fall first. E do am like gunshot! Our dear Galilei proved him
wrong.
Now,
bringing that into our discussion, the honorable man has helped us show that
two materials of the same weight (please boss-man and boss-woman, weight is NOT
mass. Weight depends on the gravitational constant while mass remains. A 10N
rod on earth would NEVER be 10N on the planet Mass) would fall at the same
time. Now listen, there is a condition: “Provided air resistance is not taken
into account.” You are reading this and you do not know what air resistance is?
Please do not read further. As we were saying, provided air resistance is
neglected or doesn’t exist, two materials of distinct material but the same
weight will drop at the same time. So Newton, after tinkering and using the
ALMIGHTY CALCULUS, said: “I DEDUCE THAT THE FORCES WHICH KEEP THE PLANETS IN
THEIR ORBS MUST BE RECIPROCALLY AS THE SQUARE OF THE DISTANCES FROM THE CENTERS
ABOUT WHICH THEY REVOLVE AND THERBY COMPARED THE FORCE REQUISITE TO KEEP THE
MOON IN HER ORB WITH THE FORCE OF GRAVITY AT THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH; AND FOUND
THEM ANSWER PRETTY NEARLY”. The reason
they fall down is that they are attracted to the earth. But this seem not to
balance the whole thing. Hmmmm. The force that brings the bodies together or
lets say causes force of attraction between two bodies is the FORCE OF
GRAVITY!!
Lemme
give you a little known fact: the bigger a body is, the greater its
gravitational field. What is gravitational field? A field (region) where force
of gravity is felt. Take for instance, the Empire
State building in America or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, or let us use Olumo rock. According to
Physics, Olumo rock has some gravitational force of its own! Let us imagine it
to become the size of Africa, theoretically, when we travel around this rock,
and another person travels normally, having it in mind that we left
simultaneously and at the same initial velocity, those of us traveling around
Olumo would take more time that the other guys! Okay, cool! That means the
concept of time is related closely to gravity. This is evident in blackholes
(Dekatron, the F is a blackhole? Bro, no vex abeg).
So,
what on earth has this Newton
said? Seriously, I understand that you just read that line two times. I also
never really got what he implied by reading it once. Well, he meant that the
force that keep the heavenly bodies in their orbits (orbit is the path that the
planet moves in space. Think of throwing a ball. The path the ball moves is the
orbit. Apply that to planets) is the reciprocal (one over – 1/ ) of the square
of the distance between the planets. The above can be fully explained as the
LAW OF GRAVITATIONAL ATTRACTION which can be explained mathematically(nah.. I
ain’t gon’ scare you with the partial differential and the integral signs) as: F = G m1m2/r^2 (arrhhh. No vex. Na computer I
use type am na. My geekiness doesn’t mean I can use office word. I really
cannot. Lol). Anyway, for those that are not mathematically oriented (me too.
Honestly), it says: F = G * (m1*m2/r*r). the 1/r^2 is what sir Newton was talking about. The M1 M2 are the masses of the planets, r^2
is the square of the radius between the plants. G is the gravitational
constant.
Anyway,
we have seen that Newton
was making sense. Now, what Newton
said might be right, but it cannot explain the orbit of planet Uranus. Now,
what could be wrong? But the thing work for other planets na. why e no come
work for Uranus? Hahahaha. I bet Newton
was sad, pissed and confused self. But wait, the father of modern physics comes
in to do his fatherly job. Who is the father of modern physics? That’s left for
you to figure out! No, seriously, Dekatron Dek, who is the father of modern
physics?
In
summary, gravity is that thing that makes a body attract another body to itself
due to its bigger size. The above is evident among planets/celestial bodies
which are
To be continued…
FOR more, visit www.dekatron.blogspot.com
Dekatron, EEE 200L writing for :
THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE, FUTA
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