If you drop something, it falls on the floor.
Why?
Everyone knows the answer: gravity.
But what is gravity and the Universal Law of Gravitation?
You can't talk about gravity without talking about Isaac Newton. Possibly the greatest scientists that ever lived, Newton realized that gravity was a force of attraction. He went even further, realizing that the size of the force depended on not only the mass of the objects, but also the distance they were from each other. His Law of Universal Gravitation was published in 1687, stating that "any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."
It even has an equation!
F= G [(m1 × m 2)]/r ²
This equation tells us that the force between two objects is equal to the mass of both objects divided by the radius squared. G is a gravitational constant; it is the same value anywhere in the universe.
How is the Universal Law of Gravitation helpful? Well, using Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation, scientists were able to calculate the presence of Neptune—before it was actually discovered! In the 1820's, scientists found that Uranus was not where Newton's laws said it should be. Over the next decades, scientists realized that another planet was affecting Uranus's orbit—a planet unknown to them before. This planet was Neptune, and it was "officially" discovered in 1846.
The Law of Universal Gravitation has helped scientists since its creation, all thanks to Isaac Newton. It describes the attraction between two objects with mass. Newton mentions it in his book, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and physics students all over the world use this equation in their studies.
Works Cited:
Admin. “Gravity for Kids.” Active Wild, 2 Nov. 2015, https://www.activewild.com/gravity-for-kids/.
“Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation Facts for Kids.” Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation Facts for Kids, https://kids.kiddle.co/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation.
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