Where is gravity strongest and weakest

Why is gravity the strongest force? So, a new question arises: why is the earth orbiting the sun and held in orbit thanks to gravity and not electromagnetic forces? The reason being that although there is no such thing as a negative mass, there is such thing as a negative charge. This means that gravity is always working, but electromagnetic forces can sometimes be a little trickier to decipher.

This is called a dipole. Or a pair of equally and oppositely charged poles that are separated by a distance of some sort. If we take this even further and double the number of charged objects we have: so, two each of a positive charge and a negative charge. We would be left with a quadrupole instead of a dipole. This is because the negative charges do an excellent job of cancelling out the positive ones.

When you add more and more equal numbers of positive to negative charges, the range of electromagnetic force gets shorted because it dies off faster and faster, as we have seen with the dipole versus the quadrupole. This is interesting because most of the atoms in our known universe have an equal number of positive charges to negative charges. This is because most things are made up of atoms, and these atoms contain protons and electrons that make up the charges.

So, interestingly, the effective range of electromagnetic force is shorter than the range of a single positive or negative charge, because they work so hard to cancel each other out. Neutral atoms, that is atoms that are equal in electromagnetic force, only have an effective electromagnetic range that can be measured in nanometers. This is absolutely tiny. The reason for this is that the positive and negative charges are cancelling each other out in a way that is shortening the electromagnetic force reach.

Making the range of the electromagnetic force reach much shorter for objects in space like star and planets. This means that these space giants can exert no real electromagnetic force on each other.

So, this means that gravity is the only force left when it comes to astronomical scales, or things like stars, planets and moons. Which is interesting given that on smaller scales, gravity is the weakest force. Gravity would suffer the exact same way as electromagnetic force is there was such a thing as negative mass. Since mass and negative mass could act in a way that cancel each other out.

But since there is no such thing as negative mass, gravity reigns supreme in outer space at a larger scale, as its reach is far greater than any of the other three fundamental forces. It's different at the poles. No matter how fast you spin the earth, a portion of the earth at the north pole will never be in orbit. The difference in in free fall acceleration between poles and equator has two contributing factors. I will discuss them one by one.

At the poles the measured gravitational acceleration is 9. Given the equatorial radius of the Earth, and the rotation rate of the Earth you can calculate how much centripetal acceleration is required in order to co-rotate with the Earth when you are located on the equator.

That comes out to 0. This required centripetal acceleration at the equator goes at the expense of the true gravitational acceleration at the equator. So we can reconstruct what the equatorial gravitational acceleration would be on a celestial body with the same size and density and equatorial bulge as the Earth, but non-rotating.

True gravitational acceleration: 9. That remaining difference is due to the Earth's flattening: on the equator you are further away from the Earth's center of gravitational attraction than at the poles. The point is if all effect was taken into account. Math would be summed up that effect of more mass under your feet still less than effect of distance from the center of mass.

Another view is. At equator there are bulge near you. But from all other side of earth the bulge is far from you. Compare to the pole that all bulge is equally far from you, that account the difference. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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Why is Earth's gravity stronger at the poles? Ask Question. Asked 7 years ago. Active 1 year ago. Viewed k times. The poles are closer to the center due to the equatorial bulge, and thus have a stronger gravitational field. Improve this question. To be more precise, you need do a little bit calculation. Keep up with Union University events on campus and student, faculty and alumni engagement around the world.

Site Map Employee Directory. Of the four fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear - gravity is the one with which people are most familiar. What he actually did was give us an analytical interpretation of gravity, that is, describe the quantities that determine the gravitational force on an object. According to Newton, any two objects have an attractive force trying to pull them together. The magnitude of this force depends upon the mass of each object and the distance between the centers of the two objects.

Mathematically, we say the force of gravity depends directly upon the masses of the objects and inversely upon the distance between the objects squared. For everyday objects like people, cars, balls, and planes the force of gravity between any two of these objects is so tiny it is insignificant. However when one of the objects is very massive, such as the Earth, then the force of gravity becomes significant. Your weight is actually just the force of gravity between your body's mass and the Earth's mass.

We feel the Earth pulling on us with a force that we call gravity.