What happens to the gravitational force between two objects as the bodies become farther apart from each other?

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What happens to the gravitational force between two objects as the bodies become farther apart from each other?

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Answer 1 · 2018-03-03T15:01:11

It becomes weaker and weaker.

Explanation:

The equation for Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is

$F = \frac{G m_{1} m_{2}}{r^{2}}$ $F=(Gm_1m_2)/r^2$

As you can see here, if $G m_{1} m_{2}$ $Gm_1m_2$ is constant, or let's say $k = G m_{1} m_{2}$ $k=Gm_1m_2$ , then we can rewrite the equation as

$F = \frac{k}{r^{2}}$ $F=k/r^2$

or

$F \propto \frac{1}{r^{2}}$ $Fprop1/r^2$

So, the force is inversely proportional to the square of the radius between the two bodies, and so the gravitational attraction becomes weaker when the distance becomes larger.

I hope this helps!

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What happens to the gravitational force between two objects as the bodies become farther apart from each other?

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