13: Newton’s Law of Gravitation
- Page ID
- 32819
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In this chapter we study the law that governs gravitational forces between massive bodies. We first introduce the law and then explore its consequences. The notion of a test mass and the gravitational field is developed, followed by the idea of gravitational flux. We then learn how to compute the gravitational field from more than one mass, and in particular from extended bodies with spherical symmetry. We finally examine Kepler’s laws and learn how these laws and the conservation laws for energy and angular momentum may be used to solve problems in orbital dynamics.