Simplifying Physics--Newton's law of Universal

Gravitation and weighing the earth

Nenmeli Srinivasan Ph D

The crowning achievement of Isaac Newton is the
discovery of law of universal gravitation. With
this, he tied up all the aspects of mechanics
and extended it to astronomy. He could derive
directly Kepler's laws of planetary motion. He
also used the new mathematics ,'fluxions' or
calculus.
This tutorial also includes a discussion of the
work of the great physicist and chemist, Henry
Cavendish, who determined the Gravitational
Constant 'G' with torsion pendulum or balance.
He started with the aim of weighing the earth
and and its density. This story is part of our


study of Newton's law. The far reaching
implications of this work will be mentioned.
We shall also derive Kepler's third law and
discuss some applications.We will mention,in
passing, the Coulomb torsion balance.

Law of universal gravitation
Newton derived this apparently simple law which
defines the force due to gravity between two
objects.
If M and m are the masses of two objects with a
distance of separation 'r', then the force of
attraction between them is :
F = G m M/r
2
------------(1)
Here G is a constant and known as "universal
Gravitational constant."
This law states that the force decreases with
square of distance. It is commonly called


"inverse square law".
This law governs the force of attraction between
a vehicle and the road, and also the force of
attraction between the earth and the moon and
those between the Sun and the planets. It is
however, a weak force since "G' is so small in
value.

What is the value of "G" and how to find it?
Cavendish's torsion pendulum experiment
Henry Cavendish made the determination of "G"
with a torsion pendulum [a.k.a 'torsion
balance']in 1979. This was a very delicate
experiment , but capable of great accuracy.
[New York Times survey included this experiment
as one of the 10 great experiments in physics.]
Henry Cavendish was already a well known
chemist; he had isolated hydrogen gas and proved


that water consists of two parts of hydrogen and
one part of oxygen by volume. He was a recluse
scientist, misogynist, misanthrope,who avoided
company and would avoid women. He was an
aristocrat with a large sum of inherited wealth
and could devote all his time for scientific
work undisturbed.
He was 67 years old when he built the torsion
pendulum, as a project to weigh the Earth or
find the Earth's mass. A crude pendulum ,half
finished, was given to him. This was built by
the Rev.John Mitchell, a country parson and a
geologist ,who had died in 1773. Note that this
work by Cavendish come nearly a century after
Newton!
Construction of torsion pendulum
The pendulum constructed by Cavendish is a large
nearly 2 meter length wooden bar which is


suspended by a wire at its center. Two small
lead balls ,weighing about 0.75 Kg were attached
to the two ends of the bar. When a larger lead
ball of mass 150 Kg was brought near the small
ones, the wooden bar would twist a bit.[In
British units, the lead balls were 2 inches in
diameter and 12 inches in diameter,separated by
8.85 in.]
The angle of twist could be measured by a light
beam reflected from a mirror attached to the
wire.[The pendulum would oscillate and the
period is measured carefully and the amplitude
is modified.]
The whole pendulum was enclosed in a large
wooden box , with two glass windows, to exclude
wind drafts. The temperature had to be
maintained almost constant. Cavendish used a
telescope to measure the deflection of the light


beam. He had to isolate the pendulum from
vibrations from the floor.He also used vernier
scales for positioning the lead balls.
Cavendish included several error calculations
for the accurate determination of 'G'.
Value of "G' and the accuracy involved.
The measured value of "G" by Cavendish was
G = 6.74 x 10
-11
m
3
kg-1 s
-3
.
This value is only 1% off from the current
accepted value of 6.67 x 10
-11
in the same
units.
Let us calculate the force of attraction between
the two lead balls of 0.75 kg and 150 kg with a
separation of 1 m:
F = G (0.75) (150)/1 = = 6.74 x 10
-11
x112.5 N
This is, indeed, a small force to measure.
Therefore Cavendish had to take several
important steps to improve the accuracy.


[The current lab demonstration torsion pendulums
of small size assure only 15% accuracy.]
[There were other earlier attempts to measure G,
but were inaccurate. See Bill Bryson's book.]
Applications
Let us apply this knowledge of G to find the
mass of the earth. Consider the force of
attraction between the earth and the moon . The
distance of separation 'r' = 384 400 km.
The moon's period has been accurately determined
as 27.4 days ; T= 27.4 x 24 x 3600 seconds.
the force of attraction F is opposed by the
centripetal force of the satellite or moon given
by : F' = m v
2
/r
where m is the mass of the moon and
where v = 2 r/T
F = G M m/ r
2

where M is the mass of the earth.


Equating F and F'
we get:
M = 4
2
r
3
/(G T
2) --------------(2)

Putting in the numbers,
M = 5.94104 x 10
24
Kg
with G = 6.74 x 10
-11
as given by Cavendish.
The modern value for the mass of the earth :
M = 5.9736 x 10
24
Kg.!
The error is less than 1%.
Cavendish proceeded to find the mean density of
the earth from its radius.
Historically, C V Boys in 1884 made a similar
torsion balance with quartz fiber and smaller
gold balls and gave an accurate value of "G".

Kepler's third law of planetary motion
From equation (2), we can get:
T
2
= [( 4
2
)/(G M)] .r
3
-------(3)


This is the third law of Kepler's for planetary
motion, where M is taken as the mass of the sun.
You can treat the product [GM] as a constant and
then the period of a planet T is related to its
mean distance r from the sun as follows:
T
2
= k r
3
-------------------(4)
Note that the mass of the planet does not enter
into the equation.
Other applications
Several applications soon followed from Newton's
law of gravitation. Lord Kelvin and others
applied it to explain the tidal rise due to the
moon acting on seas.Some others developed the
theory for the bulging of the earth at the
equator. Astronomers used the Newton's law for
studying the motion of binary stars.
Coulomb torsion balance
Interestingly, it was Charles Coulomb who


invented the torsion balance or pendulum in 1777
and the Rev Mitchell made his crude pendulum
later. Coulomb used this balance to measure the
electrostatic repulsion between like charges and
verify the "Coulomb's law" which states that the
attraction between oppositely charged objects
follows essentially the 'inverse square law'.He
used a silk thread as the torsion wire in his
balance. This balance also led to the
development of sensitive galvanometers.

Torsion pendulums were also used to study atom
movement or diffusion of carbon atoms in steels
by Clarence Zener and T. S. Ke' in 1950's.
General Reading
Bill Bryson --- A short history of nearly
everything.
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