The acceleration of a freely falling body is not exactly the same everywhere on earth. For example?

Question

In the Galapagos Islands at the equator, the acceleration of a freely falling body is 9.780m/s^2, while at he latitude of Oslo, Norway, it is 9.831m/s^2. why does the acceleration differ?

Answer 1

Height from the Earth. The gravitational pull is greater the closer you are to the center of the Earth. Also, gravitational pull at the equator is going to be less because the Earth actually bows out at the center.

Answer 2

the important difficulty to bear in ideas is that the physique's acceleration relies upon on the =internet tension= appearing on it. If the physique is in a vacuum (or any concern the place air resistance could be skipped over,) the acceleration would be quite much consistent because of the fact the only tension appearing on it somewhat is that of gravity. If air resistance is considered, the acceleration will continuously decrease till the physique reaches its terminal speed. this happens because of the fact the speedier the physique is going, the greater molecules of air it is going to push with the aid of in keeping with 2d, and the greater advantageous the stress of molecular impact. The air resistance, or drag, creates an upward tension and as a result acts against gravity. the speedier the physique is going, the greater advantageous this upward tension is and as a result the decrease the internet downward tension. at last the upward tension will equivalent the downward tension from gravity, and with a internet tension of 0 appearing on it the physique not hurries up. on the grounds that your question did not state that air resistance could be skipped over, answer 2 is real. =Edit= notice Dr Spock's answer is technically the final option: the stress of gravity relies upon on the area between the gadgets, so because of the fact the item gets closer to earth the stress will develop. For gadgets falling in basic terms a quick distance, whether, this develop in gravitational tension is negligible. Air resistance is a much greater important ingredient, and so the physique's acceleration will nonetheless decrease.

Answer 3

It has to do with the force of the earth's rotation at those points. At the equator there is more force pushing back out than there is in Oslo. The spinning of the Earth is same everywhere on Earth, but the closer to the equator you get, the stronger the force gets pushing out from the Earth. The gravity of Earth is a constant everywhere. The equator would be like being on the outside edge of a merry-go-round where the force is the strongest and it is the hardest to hold on.

Answer 4

Earth is not a perfect sphere which means that at many locations on its surface the distance to the center of mass is either more or less than at others. The intensity of gravity--its acceleration--is partly determined by how far some object is from the center of gravity. This can be seen in the equation for finding gravitation acceleration -- g = G * m / r^2 -- where 'G' is the gravitational constant (6.673^11), 'm' is the mass of the object, and 'r' is the distance from the center of gravity. Obviously, if 'r' is large 'g' will be smaller.

Answer 5

All answers are correct, but i would like to answer in a different way! First let's see why we expect acceleration towards the centre of the earth to be the same. Every particle of the earth, having total mass M attracts every freely falling point body of mass m with a force proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. For a perfectly spherical object it can be mathematically shown that for an outside point mass all such forces add to a single force towards it's centre by a point mass equal to total mass of earth and kept at the centre of earth.This looks plausible also because some particles of the earth are nearer to the outside point mass and some of them are farther than radius of earth. So this force is GMm/(r.r). According to Newton's law this force will fproduce an acceleration ma in point mass m. Thus m cancels out and we say that the acceleration of the object freely falling body of dimensions negligible compared to earth is independent of point mass on which it acts. Because earth is not a perfect sphere nor it is stationary so this acceleration varies as one goes all over the globe from equator to poles, because earth is bulging at equator and flat at poles and also the earth's surface is having centripetal acceleration due to its spin. This is also different for different points on earth from pole to equator.

Answer 6

The differences in the radius of the Earth and the centrifugal acceleration that exists at the equator and tapers off to zero at the poles.


Doug

Answer 7

The main reason is not differences in altitude (the Earth is more spherical than a pool ball) but differences in rock composition. As a result, measurement of changes in gravity can be used in geological surveying.

Answer 8

the force of gravity is dependant on the distance between the center of mass of the objects gravity is acting upon. and since force = mass*acceleration...