Science in Everyday Life - Gravitation
Gravitation, also known as gravity, is the force by which a planet or other body with mass attracts another body towards itself. This force is proportional to the product of the masses of the two bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
The law of gravitation was first described by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687 as part of his famous work, “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica”. Newton’s law of gravitation states 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.
The force of gravity is responsible for many of the phenomena we observe in the universe, including the orbits of planets around stars, the motion of the moon around the Earth, and the formation of galaxies. Einstein’s theory of general relativity, developed in the early 20th century, provides a more comprehensive explanation of gravity, in which the curvature of space-time is related to the distribution of matter and energy.