The gravitational pull


l-gray-l's avatar
    I tried yahoo, but I only got one reply, and I don't really have time to make an account with a scientific website, so here is my question.
    It is known that the gravitational pull of earth on any mass object will always be 9.8 m/s^2. So basically the mass does not matter on how fast an object falls in free fall. However, I don't really understand why this would always be true, if for example, an object that has a gravitational pull of 10 m/s^2 is 100m next to earth, then that means that that object will actually be pulling earth towards it.
Which implies that the mass of an object does affect the net acceleration, except that the mass of any object on earth is negligible compared to earth.
I know that in F=ma the m cancels and in F=Gm1m2/r^2 the m cancels as well, but it just doesn't make sense to me in a conceptual way. 
Hopefully there are some physicist in deviantart that can help me, thanks.
Comments9
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
exarobibliologist's avatar
In this thread I learned... math has proved the Earth really does accelerate around me...
Pakaku's avatar
...At such an insignificant rate that it might as well not practically exist.
exarobibliologist's avatar
l-gray-l's avatar
lol. Yes, I suppose it does in a way.
pyrohmstr's avatar
The acceleration of 9.8m/s2 only applies for objects that are not massive compared to the Earth and that are close to the earth. It's not always true and is only an approximation.

The object that is slightly more massive than the Earth will not pull the Earth towards it. They will accelerate towards each other (roughly 50 meters each) before colliding. The larger mass will accelerate towards the earth at 9.8m/s2 and the earth will accelerate at 10 m/s2. They BOTH accelerate. When you drop a stapler, the earth also accelerates toward the stapler... but that is a very small acceleration.

The mass cancels because Fgrav = Gmemobject/r2 = mobjectg

If you're a bit more specific I can help you more :meow:
l-gray-l's avatar
Thanks. I thought that I was the only one who thought this. My teachers was really confusing me.

So in other words, the mass of the objects does influence the net rate at which they get closer to each other, but each one of the objects has their own gravitational pull that it independent from the second object. Therefore, the objects in earth fall at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2 because their mass is too small to make a difference on the net acceleration. 

Did I get it right?
pyrohmstr's avatar
Net rate yes. But for the problems they'll ask you to solve, it won't.

You might have fun playing around with Universe Sandbox. You can put some objects in a 0g environment and let their gravity happen. It's kinda neat to see baseballs and shit orbit each other. Or any number of 2d simulators. It can help with the intuition part of it.
l-gray-l's avatar
haha. cool, thanks for the info.