How is the weight of the planet Earth calculated?
In: Earth Science
The first thing to be aware of is that the weight of a planet is determined by its gravitational effect on other bodies. Due to this, we can use something called Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. This is a formula that tells us the force of attraction between 2 bodies is proportional to the product of their masses, divided by the square root of the distance between their respective centres of mass.
F = (G*m*M)/√r
Essentially this means that since we have r: the radius of the earth, m: the mass of an object (on the earth’s surface), F: the gravitational force and G: the gravitational constant, we can rearrange this to find the mass of the earth.
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