Earth Sciences 1023A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Centrifugal Force, Equatorial Bulge, Nicolaus Copernicus
25 Mar 2016
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Four basic elements - earth, water, air, and fire. Objects move toward their own elemental sphere - e. g. , rocks fall to earth. Proof , he claimed, that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Nicolaus copernicus proposed that earth orbits the sun (along with rest of the planets). Newton- a man, an apple, and a new theory. Legend says that newton was struck on the head by a falling apple, prompting his ideas on gravity. This story is no doubt apocryphal, but he was the first person to realize that the force that caused objects to fall such as apples also held the planets in orbit. Based on kepler"s laws, newton formulated the universal law of gravitation. Published in 1687 in philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, or simply principia. A gravitational field only has one pole (monopole), the force field lines for a gravitational field are pointing in towards the mass.
