How does gravity change while getting further away from earth if you are in a rocket?
In: Physics
Get two magnets . Fix one to a solid point. Stick them together N and S poles. Pull them apart . Then slowly move them back together . At a certain point you will feel the magnetic force pulling the unfixed magnet towards the fixed one. And at a certain point the magnetic force will not effect the unfixed magnet . Different size fixed magnets and unfixed magnets will have a different effect on each other . Just like different sized planets. Big fixed magnet(earth) tiny small iddy biddy magnet(rocket)
The gravitational attraction force between two masses is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their separation distance.
So, as you move away from Earth, the gravitational effect will weaken at a constant rate that is proportional to the distance you are from earth squared.
There’s an Inverse Square Law for gravitation, and it applies to all material bodies. It says that as you double the distance **from the center of mass**, the force of gravity goes down by four. As you quadruple the distance, the force goes down by sixteen, etc.
Whatever the factor of distance is, multiply by itself and that’s how much gravity goes down at that distance.
Newton first described it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation
But I think you might be asking a different question. You may be asking about the experience of *weight*, which is not the same question as what someone experiences on a rocket if it’s in orbit. You can have weightlessness by orbiting a body, and yet be close enough that the force is still very far from negligible.
In other words, even though the International Space Station experiences weightlessness by being in orbit around Earth, if it were held stationary, it would still have quite a bit of gravitational force.
What do you mean by change? The strength of gravity gets weaker the further you are from the source, but that’s about it.
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