Laws and Constants
According to the law of universal gravitation, the attractive force (F) between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses (m1 and m2), and inversely proportional to the square of the distance, r, (inverse-square law) between them:
The constant of proportionality, G, is the gravitational constant.
The gravitational constant is a physical constant that is difficult to measure with high accuracy. In SI units, the 2010 CODATA-recommended value of the gravitational constant (with standard uncertainty in parentheses) is:
with relative standard uncertainty 1.2×10−4.
Read more about this topic: Gravitational Constant
Famous quotes containing the word laws:
“The laws of Caesar are one thing, those of Christ, another. Papinianus judges one way, our Paul another.”
—Jerome (c. 340420)